By Rob Nicholson
When we looked well at all of this, we went to the orchard and garden, which was such a wonderful thing to see and walk in, that I was never tired of looking at the diversity of trees, and noting the scent which each one had, and the paths full of roses and flowers, and the many fruit trees and native roses, and the pond full of fresh water.… I say again that I stood looking at it and thought that never in the world would there be discovered other lands such as these … Of all these wonders that I then beheld, today all is overthrown and lost, nothing left standing. —Bernal Diaz (1568)
Anyone who has ever labored to create and maintain a garden, especially on a large scale, knows too well how last year’s vision can succumb to cold and drought or become an unimagined rampant tangle. Every profession carries a deep fascination for its own past, but some trades bear the ravages of time more notably than others. Architects, potters, and sculptors probably fare the best, with the products of their imaginations enduring long after their creators are returned to dust. How few gardens there are of great age, and fewer still, ruins that can be recognized as gardens. The gardener’s lot is to dodge between the seasons, collecting daily pleasures, with scant chance for the admiration of future generations. But few of us who garden have had to let their gardens endure a clash of worlds, with culture intent on destroying the monuments, religion, culture, and creative products of another.
The epigraph above is by from a scarred veteran, Bernal Diaz, who served in the army of Hernán Cortés, the force that brought down the Aztec empire. In his memoir Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (The True History of the Conquest of New Spain) he reflected on the magnificent gardens they discovered. The diversity of the gardens reflected the vast flora of Mexico coupled with the rulers’ obsession with plants, and their scale, design, and beauty stunned and beguiled the conquistadors.
On a hill at the edge of the metropolis of modern Mexico City stand the ruins of one such garden, now 500 years old. It was the “stately-pleasure dome” of the Texcocan tlatoani or king Nezahualcoyotl (1402–1472), the final retreat from the wars, exiles, and court intrigues of his life. A place of poetry and refuge in its heyday, it is possibly the oldest and best-preserved Pre-Columbian garden site in the New World, and perhaps the oldest botanic garden in North America.
A place of poetry and refuge in its heyday, [Texcotzingo] is possibly the oldest and best-preserved Pre-Columbian garden site in the New World, and perhaps the oldest botanic garden in North America.
Being in southern Mexico to collect plant specimens in the state of Oaxaca in the late summer of 1998, I decided to end that trip by visiting the ruins at Texcotzingo. After flying into the Mexico City airport, I rented a car and began the drive to the outlying town of Texcoco, site of the garden’s ruins. The day’s journey began in an inauspicious manner as not only was traffic fast and furious, but within the first ten minutes of driving I was twice pulled over by Mexican police for phantom “violations” requiring, after long debates, the fines of instant justice.
I poked along through local traffic, occasionally stopping to get directions. Texcoco has a large agricultural college, and here I was given precise directions to the site. From the college I began to drive upward, off the fertile, ancient lake bed into the dry scrub of opuntia cactus and mesquite trees. The ruins are now part of the Zona Arqueológica Tetzcotzinco (INAM) and the small quiet village of Molino De Las Flores rests near the foot of the regal retreat. Here I parked just as a party of Americans, including Cornell-trained horticulturist Paul Avilés, came down the path. Their effusive excitement erased the tension of the morning’s drive. Paul would go on to write one of the definitive papers on the ruin, cited below, which maps out the multi-faceted complexity of the site.
A path took me past the ragged farmscape of the town’s outskirts, burros clanging bells and neighing horses acting as sentries. Shaggy opuntia trees and spiky agaves hardly conjured up images of the lush gardens of centuries past. Walls and steps led upward, some of these recently repaired by INAM. The path doubled backward and became sharply steeper. About a third of a way up the hill came the day’s first revelation: on a forty-foot-wide patio was 14-foot-wide pool some five feet deep; plants in large terra-cotta pots could easily be imagined decorating the plaza. Stairs carved of solid rock led down into the pool, while slabs of stone with carved channels down their middles led the water into the pool.
Much of what we know of Nezahualcoyotl’s life and works comes from Fernando de Alba Ixtlilxochitl, a Catholic partial descendant of the king’s clan, who was an early chronicler of the regent’s history and world. While historians debate the influence of the Church on his writings and perhaps his own desire to enhance his clan’s reputation, his account gives details found nowhere else. He related that three frog statues, perhaps symbolizing the Triple Alliance, once were stationed on the edge of the pool, and the remnants of one is still visible. Precious little additional figural work from the garden remains, though the National Museum of Anthropology holds a monkey-faced, open-mouthed gargoyle pulled from Texcotzingo, where water once gushed from its mouth, no doubt to the amusement of children.
Was the pool constructed for religious significance, or was it simply for bathing and basking, a precursor to Hollywood hot tub hedonism by 500 years?
However sybaritic his pursuits at the height of his power might seem to have been, it was not hedonism that set Nezahualcoyotl on his path to greatness. At the age of 15, in 1418, the young Texcocan prince experienced an invasion of the kingdom of Texcoco by the neighboring Tepanacs. Hiding in a tree, he witnessed the assassination of his father, the king. Nezahualcoyotl escaped, was captured, escaped again, and began a period of exile and subterfuge. In time the Tepanacs, under the regent Maxtla, bled their subjects to the point of revolt. After enlisting the aid of Tenochtitlán, the neighboring power in the valley, Nezahualcoyotl returned from exile to lead an uprising, reclaiming the Texcocan capital and vanquishing Maxtla.
Nezahualcoyotl sited his rural retreat on a cone-shaped peak in this transition zone. He and his subjects transformed this small mountain into a magnificent garden, Texcotzingo, a refuge suffused with many layers of meaning, symbolism, and purpose.
This sequence of events helped forge what came to be known as the Triple Alliance, uniting in purpose the two large kingdoms of Texcoco and Tenochtitlán, along with the smaller Tlacopan. We generally think of this triple alliance as the Aztec kingdom. These three states combined to dominate the Central Mexican plateau for the next century and spread their influence and dominion 600 miles to the south.
The early historian of the Spanish invasions of Mexico and Peru, William Hickling Prescott, included many details about Nezahualcoyotl and Texcotzingo in his classic “The History of the Conquest of Mexico” (1843). He related that within his kingdom, Nezahualcoyotl solidified his rule with a code of 80 laws, including one regulating the cutting of forests (this may be the first conservation law enacted in the New World). He divided the government into four councils, those of war, finance, justice, and of music. This latter council was responsible for the pursuit of astronomy, biology, botany, and the arts of music, dance, poetry, painting, weaving, and featherwork.
The Aztec kingdom was established on a high lakebed ringed by hills and mountains. Tenochtitlán and Tlacopan were on the western edge, while Texcoco occupied the east. Water management by means of dikes and aqueducts was crucial, and Nezahualcoyotl became an adept engineer during his exile in Tenochtitlán. Rising off the level plain of the ancient lake bed, a gradual incline steepens into a series of hills and mountains. Nezahualcoyotl sited his rural retreat on a cone-shaped peak in this transition zone. He and his subjects transformed this small mountain into a magnificent garden, Texcotzingo, a refuge suffused with many layers of meaning, symbolism, and purpose.
His skill as an engineer was honed when he designed various dike and canal works within the Three Kingdoms, while his aesthetic sense had been refined by the artistry produced by his Council of Music. These were brought to bear on the design and execution of this early North American botanic garden.
The ruins of Texcotzingo, sadly, are among the few vestiges of this passion for large scale gardens.
Evans, cited below, compiled a listing of 20 pleasure gardens, zoos, aviaries, game preserves and medicinal plant gardens of the Aztec kingdom. Chapultepec, the major pleasure garden of the Tenochtitlán elite, is where Nezahualcoyotl reputedly
designed the aqueduct and tree plantings. It is now a major urban park of Mexico City. Huaxtepec, was built during the rule of Tenochtitlán emporer Moctezuma I (1398–1469), was located 60 miles southeast of Tenochtitlán, and at an altitude 3000 feet lower in a milder, more tropical climate. This allowed for the cultivation of tropical rarities like Chiranthodendron
pentadactylon, the hand flower tree, and other tender plants. Moctezuma requested plants from the lowlands from the Lord of Cuetlaxtla (now Veracruz on the Gulf coast) be transported to this garden which, like the contemporaneous Texcotzingo, were also tied to religious worship and symbolism. This garden, from a horticultural standpoint in a different “hardiness
zone,” may stand as the first amassment of tropical plants in the New World. (For a fuller description of this garden, see Granziera, cited below).
The ruins of Texcotzingo, sadly, are among the few vestiges of this passion for large scale gardens. The royal villa was positioned at the base of a hill in the grove of giant ahuehuetl trees, Taxodium mucronulatum. Davidila Padilla, in 1596, reported trees at this site with 90-foot trunks with a four-foot diameter.
To this dry site, Nezahualcoyotl brought the cool water of Mt. Tlaloc, carried for five miles by an aqueduct, portions of which still stand today. His design would have required a small army of laborers and slaves to build it, managed by a cadre of experienced engineers, overseers, soldiers, and skilled workers. The aqueduct joined the hill about two thirds of the way up, and a system of canals and pipes distributed the water to numerous pools and cisterns or released it at various points to tumble and mist over the cliffs and rocks. With the main problem of irrigation solved, plants adapted to moister and cooler climes could be nestled into appropriate, artificial microclimates. No planting plan or list exists today of course, nor is it safe to assume that those plants presently growing at the site, lovely as they may be, seeded themselves from Nezahualcoyotl’s original plantings.
The King’s love of plants and nature manifested itself in reports of his collection of botanical illustrations. Some of these were illustrations on the paper material that was made from āmatl bark (a Ficus species) or from the fibers of Agave. The Codex Mendoza is an account of the tribute lists the Triple Alliance extracted from subjugated regions on a regular basis and paper was one of the many items demanded from particular regions.
Nezahualcoyotl had an extensive library, including botanical depictions. Alexander von Humbolt, in his book Cosmos, recorded that copies of these made their way to Francisco Hernández de Toledo, the private physician of Philip II of Spain. He had been sent to Mexico to document the flora and fauna, and his encyclopedia is one of the first post-conquest books to feature depictions of Mexican natural history. None of the plates of Nezahualcoyotl’s collection are known to survive today, and pre-conquest works on paper are exceedingly rare, few having survived the fires of the Spanish purging. Other botanical depictions, painted on the walls of his residence, were of tropical plants he could not grow in the high Central Valley. These frescos, botanical artworks, and gardens are all now eradicated and lost.
The Badianus Manuscript/Codex Badiano (1552), an illustrated Aztec herbal produced 30 years after the fall of Tenochtitlán under the eyes of Catholic clergy (hence no religious references), contains 182 color illustrations made by an unknown artist of Aztec descent. It gives us some idea of the style and symbolism of Aztec botanical illustration, and may be similar to what Nezahualcoyotl contemplated in his portfolios and on his walls. It includes the oldest depictions of New World Magnolia, Pinus, Cupressus, Abies, and Theobroma, along with many other plant varieties of medicinal, culinary, and ritual import. But with so little to compare it with, we have no way of knowing if this trove of images is a standardized set of depictions or a single artist’s wondrous interpretation.
Given the more refined reputation of the Texcocan court as compared to Tenochtitlán, we might expect a greater sensitivity to ornamental plant material, its cultivation, and its placement in a well-designed landscape.
Nezahualcoyotl and his allies competed botanically with each other through their collections of living plants. In their extensive gardens, nurseries, game preserves, and retreats, they incorporated plant material transported from throughout their domain, and gardeners knowledgeable about their culture were often pulled to the cities with the plants. Much as the grand conservatories of Europe in the 1800s displayed flora from their colonies, Texcotzingo may have had plants bedded from various vassal states, a living display of empire and control. Perhaps the most compelling evidence of this obsessive horticultural rivalry was detailed by De Torquemada in his historical tome of 1615, Monarquía Indiana. Moctezuma II invaded the bordering Mixtec kingdom after the Lord of Tlachquiauhco, Malinal, refused to part with a particularly rare tree, known as the red-flowered popcorn tree (tlapalizquixochitli, probably a species of Bourreria) and caustically insulted Moctezuma’s emissaries in the process. This affront may have provided a gambit to justify an invasion, or perhaps he sincerely coveted an additional rarity. After the usual slaughter, he added the tree to his garden, a serious gardener indeed. (See Nicholson, cited below).
Some of these gardens, such as Calpulalpan, specialized in medicinal plants, possibly indicating a split between science and pleasure grounds. Given the more refined reputation of the Texcocan court as compared to Tenochtitlán, we might expect a greater sensitivity to ornamental plant material, its cultivation, and its placement in a well-designed landscape.
If Diaz related 450 years ago that “today all is overthrown and lost” with respect to all of these resplendent gardens, what more could I possibly hope to find? I continued upward, passing another small pool, this one carved into the solid stone of the cliff side. Was it just big enough for one—a solitary poet’s musing spot—or did it hold clusters of children under a watchful governess’s eye? Possibly it contained water plants such as the Mexican waterlily, Nelumbo mexicana, grown in a tub the way many water-lily fanciers do today.
Two step-sided niches were carved into a wall behind the pool, and it was easy to imagine potted plants in each, or fresh bouquets of flowers picked early that morning prior to the king’s soak. That the Aztecs only had soft metals like gold, silver, and copper, makes these rock carvings astounding. A series of steep steps carved into the cliff side led down to a small plaza, perhaps a small intimate space for family meals under a tent or for smaller scale entertainments. The path leveled out and bent with slight s-curves, following every modern gardening dictum against straight paths. The inside of each curve formed a natural planting area. Were echeverias, salvias, marigolds or any of a hundred Mexican ornamentals planted here for scent and display?
The garden was designed as a series of plazas, patios, manicured overlooks, and hidden beauty spots all connected by a series of paths. It is reminiscent of the “circuit gardens” of the Feudal Japanese nobility where one “takes a journey” within a garden. The ascent began in a planted forest (wilderness?) of Taxodium at the bottom and proceeded to a temple and statuary depicting his life at the top, perhaps symbolic of the regent’s own struggles and life’s journey.
Next to one section of path ran an above ground aqueduct ran, two low walls a foot wide containing a sluice of water. It was remarkably similar to Persian garden design, the gardens of another arid zone, where the sound and sight of water cool the psyche.
The ascent began in a planted forest (wilderness?) of Taxodium at the bottom and proceeded to a temple and statuary depicting his life at the top, perhaps symbolic of the regent’s own struggles and life’s journey.
Toward the back side of the mountain was a point where the main aqueduct ended its five-mile journey from the mountains, carrying water on the top of large embankments, some 150 feet high. It crossed a final small valley, and brought forth its nourishing water. In the fields of the small farms below, a sombreroed man in a bright yellow shirt slowly pecked at weeds in the dusty brown rows of soil.
A seventy-five-foot square plaza looked eastward towards receding sheets of mountains. At one end was a set of terraces and a cave carved out of stone. Caves had specific religious meaning to the Aztecs and it seemed to retain its seriousness of purpose as there were recent offerings of flowers in gallon tin cans and ears of corn. The largest level area upon the mountain, this was likely a place for ceremony, oratory, and the entertainments of song, poetry, and dance.
Stairs rise from this plaza to the mountain’s peak, where Ixtlilxochitl states that Nezahualcoyotl built a temple, its first nine stories to represent the Nine Heavens. A tenth and final story was topped by a roof painted black, and profusely gilded with stars on the exterior with inlaid metals and precious stones on the interior. The King dedicated this to “the unknown God, the Cause of causes” a monotheistic supreme being that he had come to believe in.
Accounts describe a statue of a canine at the crest of the mountain, carved with Nezahualcoyotl’s face, likely a gift to his descendants. Nezahualcoyotl’s name itself translates to “Hungry (or) Fasting Coyote,” so the obvious symbolism may be a declaration of final victory, triumph over his early history of family murder and exile. The statue was destroyed early on by the Spanish, the Bishop Don Juan de Zumárraga having purged it and many other sculptures on the mountain as symbols of idolatry. Not only was the invasion by the Spanish a martial invasion but a spiritual conquest as well.
Coming to the crest of the summit, none of this art and architecture could be seen or even imagined. Only a pile of rubble with a broken concrete crucifix hinted at worship of any stripe. Amid the tumble of boulders were evergreen oaks, three-foot shrubs of Echevaria and the beautiful blooms of Sprekelia formosissima, a bulbous plant of the Amaryllis family. The bright cardinal-red flowers with five strap-like petals seemed an aerial dance of color, a tangle of brushstrokes floating in space. Who can imagine what wonders of the plant world were once tended here? What glorious birds came to visit? What poet’s song graced the dusk?
Evidence suggests a vast collection of living plants were kept here; touring the site, I could see how they might have been planted and nurtured here. We know Nezahualcoyotl was learned in plant life, too. Do these elements make Textcotzingo a botanical garden? If so, with its dedication in 1467, it would be the remnant of the oldest botanic garden in the world. It was described as such by Zelia Nuttall (1857–1933), an American archaeologist and anthropologist specializing in pre-conquest Mexican cultures, who was perhaps the first to refer to these ancient Aztec gardens as “botanical gardens,” in English, in 1923.
Who can imagine what wonders of the plant world were once tended here? What glorious birds came to visit? What poet’s song graced the dusk?
Given an incredible palette of 26,000 Mexican plant species and the regent’s imperative of beauty and rarity, it becomes an enjoyable intellectual exercise to imagine which botanical wonders were included. Which senses were prioritized? Which colors? Which scents? As Granziera documents, specific flowers were associated with the gods and goddesses of the diverse Aztec pantheon; did religious connotations impact the plant choices and designs? Nezahualcoyotl dedicated the site to Tláloc, the god of rain and fertility, so it is probable that this deity’s flower, Tagete lucida, the hallucinogenic Mexican mint marigold was heavily planted. Of the hundreds of Mexican Salvia spp., ranging from compact shrubs to 10-foot giants, with a choice of all flower colors but green, did Nezahualcoyotl favor certain species? Did he delight in watching hummingbirds battle over their blooms? What bulbs were nestled in crevices—rainlilies (Zephyranthes), clown flowers (Tigridia), spider lilies (Hymenocallis), Aztec lilies (Sprekelia), the charming and elegant coral drops (Bessera elegans), or mariposas (Calochortus)? What Mexican species of current garden-center favorites were cultivated here 500 years ago—begonias, marigolds, dahlias, lantanas, plumerias, portulacas, daturas? Given the worldwide fascination with cactus and succulents, it would seem logical that large candelabra cacti and dramatic agaves, as wells as sprawling sedums and pincushion cacti, playfully punctuated the slopes, much as Mexican landscape architects use them today. What species of conifers were chosen? How many of the 43 Mexican species of Pinus made the cut? Did the intoxicating scents of the medicinal yolloxochitl (Magnolia mexicana) or eloxochitl (Magnolia macrophylla subsp. dealbata) waft among the paths and plazas? Were the gardeners selecting and propagating different strains of Rosa montezumae, being the earliest “rose fanciers” in North America? What modern landscape architect wouldn’t dream of recreating the plantings?
A floristic inventory of the mountain conducted by Pudilo and Koch in 1988 showed a surprisingly high level of diversity over its the 50-hectare extent, with 375 species, 234 genera, and 70 families of vascular plants. They cite a few species that seem out of place for this region (Thevetia peruviana), and they detail a number of rare species, such as Harrison’s spider lily (Hymenocallis harrisoniana) and a cotton relative, Malaviscus arboreus. But they also list “garden variety” genera such as Dahlia, Salvia, Sedum, and Opuntia.
While the plants presently on the mountain may or may not be direct descendants of those put in place by Nezahualcoyotl’s gardeners, the remarkable hardscape endures. One suspects that additional wonders lie buried throughout the hill and the state department of archeology, INAM, is slowly working to uncover the ruin.
If you apply the modern definition (IUCN 1989) of botanic garden—“a garden containing scientifically ordered and maintained collections of plants, usually documented and labeled, and open to the public for purposes of recreation, education, and research”—then it is a pretty loose fit. (In 2018, Botanic Gardens Conservation International updated its own definition to include “conserving rare and threatened plants, compliance with international policies, and sustainability and ethical initiatives.”) But then, what are considered the earliest European botanic gardens, Pisa (1544) and Padua (1545), probably wouldn’t qualify either, let alone dozens of modern US gardens that label themselves botanic gardens.
While the plants presently on the mountain may or may not be direct descendants of those put in place by Nezahualcoyotl’s gardeners, the remarkable hardscape endures.
But perhaps the category itself is too wide to apply to the site, or others like it in Mesoamerica and beyond. In his seminal paper on Texcotzingo, “Seven Ways of Looking at a Mountain”, Paul Avilés, the horticulturist and scholar I met at the entrance to the site in 1998, advises against the temptation to pigeon-hole them into our definitions. “Even if Aztec gardens do satisfy most of the European criteria for what constitutes a botanical garden,” he writes, “an attempt to retrofit them to Western categories qualifies as a rather blatant bit of contemporary cultural colonialism.” He continues:
[F]orcing these indigenous artifacts into decidedly non-Aztec definitions and paradigms skews and constricts, contorts and falsifies both our understanding and our experience of these spaces, and in the process, such a move also distorts their meaning. By broadening the questions, however, we can begin to consider a space like Tetzcotzingo on its own terms, without reference to the European tradition and as the product of a complex garden-making culture worthy of serious and sustained study.
Our human concept of “botanic garden” has been ever evolving and continues to change, drastically in just my lifetime. Notably, the 1989 definition does not include the term “conservation,” now a major focus. As Granziera points out, the worldview of plants by the Aztecs by contrast was saturated with religious beliefs and connections. Unlike current botanic gardens, these Aztec gardens were planted with worship, more than science, in mind. But for this botanist (and possible cultural colonialist!), if you know the site’s history, the Aztec rulers’ passion for plants, visit it, and work your imagination hard, “botanic garden” seems rightly applied.
Our human concept of “botanic garden” has been ever evolving and continues to change
I started my downward passage, retracing my steps and getting a final look at the marvelous ruins. At the large pool, two Mexican teenagers sat atop a wall obliviously in love, perhaps like lucky couples five centuries earlier. Looking out into the valley from the patio of a once-mighty king, they could only hear the future of their own heartbeats. I passed quietly by, grateful to have had my botanical boundaries pushed in new directions, and with dozens of questions needing further study. If nothing else, Texcotzingo, the haunting ruin of an once paradisical garden, compels you to discover, while there and afterward.
The early historian of the Spanish invasions of Mexico and Peru, William Hickling Prescott, included many details about Nezahualcoyotl and Texcotzingo in his classic The History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843). He pulled much of his information from Fernando de Alba Ixtlilxochitl’s work but recognized there was “double filtration” in that there was a translation from Nahua to Castillian and then Castillian to English.
Nevertheless, he offered this poignant translation from one of Nezahualcoyotl’s poems.
… Then weave the chaplet of Flowers,
And sing thy songs in praise of the all-powerful God;
For the glory of this world soon fadeth away.
Rejoice in the green freshness of thy spring
For the day shall come when thou shalt sigh for
these joys in vain …
Nezahualcoyotl, 1402–1472, preserver of forests and lover of plants, left for us in his poetry a succinct warning, which seems so apt in our era of climatic and ecological turmoil. We might do well to listen.
Rob Nicholson worked for three New England botanic gardens, undertaking over thirty plant-collecting expeditions for collections building, conservation, and medical and botanical research, and making 1,920 wild collections for the Arnold Arboretum.
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