Take a walk on the Azul side: Tucson Botanical Gardens opens new Frida Kahlo exhibit

Take a walk on the peaceful, beautiful side with a visit to the new permanent exhibit at Tucson Botanical Gardens, Frida’s Garden.

Based on the gardens at Casa Azul, artist Frida Kahlo’s Mexico City home, the newly opened exhibit does not seek to replicate it but follows in the spirit of the place.

“Some things are directly from her garden and other things are imagined for it, maybe a placeholder for it,” Adam Farrell-Wortman, lead horticulturalist at the gardens, said. “We’re not going to have monkeys, she had monkeys, but the exhibit came with these lovely animal sculptures to represent the animals she had in her garden.”

Some things are a copy of what is in Casa Azul’s garden, such as a small pyramid, for example.

“The pyramid is directly from the blueprint of the pyramid at Casa Azul,” Farrell-Wortman said. 

The object here was to give the feel of a type of patio.

“Casa Azul is a courtyard garden, so we try to capture that,” Farrell-Wortman said. “While we’re not a courtyard, we picked a spot in the garden with really verdant sides that were tall so we could make that courtyard feel along with these sort of floating walls.”

He was referring to the walls that separate Frida’s Garden from the Barrio Garden, Nuestro Jardín.

“We’re quite proud of it,” he said.

The garden, designed by local landscape architect Maria Voris, is meant to feature seasonal flowers. For example, currently the garden is bright orange with marigolds in a nod to Dia de los Muertos.

“The small pot marigolds will be swapped out seasonally with other plants or just taken out entirely,” Farrell-Wortman said. 

This is not Farrell-Wortman’s favorite job. In fact, he said it’s monotonous, a believable fact when visitors consider that there are about 300 marigold pots and about 1,500 marigold plants in Frida’s Garden and neighboring Barrio Garden. 

“But it’s worth it,” he said. “The effect is stunning.”

Next season? Poinsettias, of course, and in the summer, possibly sunflowers.

This falls in line with Frida Kahlo’s philosophy that permeated her life.

“She was rejecting colonialism,” Farrell-Wortman said. “She rewrote a painting style embracing her heritage. She did the same with gardening. At the time French gardening was the rave in Mexico City for formal gardens. She rejected that and planted native plants to Mexico and South America. When we were choosing our plant palette, we decided that we would have some of the same plants she has but to embrace her spirit we would plant Sonoran Desert natives as well. It would be betraying the spirit of that garden if we didn’t have our own native plants.”

However, “We did avoid big stabby things,” Farrell-Wortman said, so visitors will not see saguaros inside the Frida-blue walls. They will see native yuccas and yellow blooming ground cover, for example. Natives from Mexico include a couple of lovely yucca elephantides and marigolds.

Planning for the garden actually began two years ago with a phone call, according to executive director Michelle Conklin. In about 2016 the Botanical Gardens hosted a traveling Frida’s Garden, and it was transformative for the garden, she said.

“When that went away, I really thought it would never happen again,” she said. “The universe told us otherwise when I got a call from Naples (Florida) Botanical Garden who asked if we were interested in purchasing their Frida Kahlo exhibit.”

Conklin was very interested and determined to give that garden a home and not just any home.

“I really wanted to create a permanent home for this garden,” Conklin said. “Our proximity to Mexico, our cultural and diverse community, the fact that we have, I think, the country’s only barrio gardens and that it was going to be housed in this central part in the heart of our garden just made perfect sense.”

Perla Labarthe is the director of Casa Azul in Mexico City. She came for the opening of Frida’s Garden.

“For us, it’s a great opportunity to do this project in collaboration with the botanical garden because this is a way to stretch the blue walls of the blue house in Mexico City,” she said. “I think it’s a way to show a little bit of Frida outside Mexico City and I think it’s a way to connect with audiences in other places.”

Staff began taking out the previous garden in March and opened this new exhibit to the public on Saturday, Oct. 11. During that time staff and contractors replaced the electrical and hydro infrastructure. They replaced walkways and poured cement for the patio and artist’s studio portions. They planted, replanted and relocated cactus. They laid mulch, built and painted. 

Farrell-Wortman’s favorite part of the garden?

“It’s partly just because of where I am as a plant guy, I really love this little pond area,” he said. He also loves the Sonoran spider lily planted nearby, which has blooms that look a bit like a big spider. In the wild the species can be found around riparian zones in the Sonoran Desert.

Farrell-Wortman said what he hopes is for visitors to take a journey with him in the garden. 

“I want visitors to be transported to Mexico City,” he said. “That was our ideal with this space. So those folks who are from Mexico or have a real affinity for the space, I want them to feel at home in here and for those who have never been to Mexico, I want them to have a really good feeling about what to expect if they do go (to Casa Azul).”

Next up for the garden, the annual Lights Up! A Festival of Illumination, opening Nov. 28. 

Tucson Botanical Gardens

WHEN: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily, visit Butterfly Magic between 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, WHERE: 2150 N. Alvernon Way

COST: adults/$19; students, seniors 62 and older and military/$15; and children 4 to 12/$10. Members, children of members and children younger than 4 are all admitted free.

INFO: tucsonbotanical.org