Ethnobotanical Gardens

Attached to the Ex-Convent of Santo Domingo is a large ethnobotanical garden. Spanish tours are 3 times daily and cost 50 pesos. English tours are 3 times a week and cost 100 pesos. Of course I took the Spanish tour, and it was one of my favorite sites in Oaxaca so far. Pictures here.

The gardens surround the convent and are blocked off from the street by a high, green-tinted volcanic stone wall. 11 years ago, the space that now contains the gardens was in danger of becoming a huge parking lot for downtown Oaxaca, but when they discovered some ruins underneath, the government stepped in and began to rehabilitate the gardens. The guide, a 20-something guy wearing pumas, an adidas hoodie, jeans, and an intensely gelled faux-hawk, was amazingly well-informed, and told us many interesting things about the garden. The zig-zag paths, made of crushed green volcanic rock, are modeled after the patterns carved into the Zapotec temple at Mitla. Part of the garden is used to grow edible and medicinal plants such as chiles, herbs, and maguey. The rest is used to help bring back endangered plant species from extinction. The most interesting plants included a 1000-year-old cactus, the tree from which amate (paper used to make indigenous codexes) is made, and the gringa quemada, a tree that sheds its bark much like a sun-burned gringo sheds his skin.

The guide also explained the irrigation system for the garden. Throughout the site are small channels and large pools used to aerate and collect water. Spouts coming from the roof shoot rainwater into rock filters and from there the water trickles down into cisterns.

Several fountains were commissioned for the gardens, both modeled again after the geometric patterns found at Mitla. The most striking fountain is made from mica chips, and the water running through it is died red with cochineal, an insect used from pre-columbian times onward to die cloth red. At one time an ounce of cochineal was worth more than an ounce of gold. The red water runs down the face of the fountain like blood; the blood of the many indigenous slaughtered during the Spanish conquest (according to the fountain's designer).

My tour companions were from all over the globe; none of them were native Spanish speakers. I overheard some of them saying they had understood about 40% of the tour. The fact that I had understood 100% made me very smugly satisfied.