Required Reading: W.S. Merwin, the Poet Gardener - Gardenista
Required Reading: W.S. Merwin, the Poet Gardener - Gardenista
“Stepping into the shadow of the mango limbs, I was in another world,” writes the poet W.S. Merwin of his first visit, more nearly 40 years ago, to the 19-acre former pineapple plantation on Maui where he would make his garden.
Photography by Larry Cameron courtesy of The University of South Carolina Press.
W. S. Merwin, born September 30, 1927, has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. After living in Europe, Mexico, and New York, he came to Hawaii.
Photographer Larry Cameron’s photos are deeply evocative of the dense, humid garden in which grow more than 800 species of palm.
Johannesteijsmannia altifons is a fan palm, native to tropical rainforests, and grows without a central trunk.
Merwin introduced native species to recreate a semblance of the original landscape before it was disturbed by manufacture and development.
The gardener remembers mistakes and losses, some for a long time, and imagines the garden in a year, and in an unimaginable future,” writes Merwin.
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