For twenty-one years I was employed as the personal secretary to Latin America’s greatest landscape architect, a man you almost certainly will have heard of. If you haven’t heard of him, you will have sat in one of the parks he designed, unless you make it your business to avoid public places, in which case you might have been lucky enough to sit in one of the many private gardens he created, in our beautiful city or outside of it, in the hills or valleys, inland or by the sea. And if you were among the very luckiest, you might even have visited the garden he designed for himself on the estate of Three Winds, one of the most intriguing gardens in the world according to scholars and experts, on par with El Novillero and Compton Acres. If so, we’ve probably even met, since it was I who received guests in the role of personal secretary during my years at Three Winds, ushering the new arrival into the living room, always cool no matter how oppressive the heat outside, or, if he was staying overnight, to the guest room. There I would leave the guest in peace to collect himself after his travels, to change his clothes or rest in the rattan chair. Twenty minutes later I would knock again with a glass of lemonade on a beaten copper tray and the invitation to meet on the patio at half past, when Latin America’s greatest landscape architect would begin his personal tour of the acres brimming with rare species, so rare you would have to walk into the heart of the forest for days to find them, and perhaps even then you might not.

Some of the trees he planted over half a century ago. When I die, he used to say, remember not to move anything. Not even the pills on the night table? I would ask. All right, he used to say, but only the pills. I’m a realist and a man of the earth! he used to shout when I looked at him the wrong way. I built my house with my own hands, so I don’t think it’s too much to ask that when I die, my glasses be left where I put them down! Because it was his hope (now trampled by history, into whose path he stumbled) that Three Winds would become a museum where the public would come and fall in love with the flora of our beautiful country, as he had. He carried his burden of regrets the same as anyone—so many of his dreams never came to fruition, and others only after many compromises—but on those acres, at least, everything existed according to his design, as far as was possible: the rest was up to nature.