Orchid Show’s Cuban-born Designer Recalls Native Influences
Posted in Exhibitions, People, The Orchid Show on March 4 2010, by Plant Talk
 |
Jorge Sánchez, president and co-founder of the landscape architecture firm Sánchez & Maddux in Palm Beach, Florida, designed this year’s Orchid Show. |
For Sánchez & Maddux to be awarded the opportunity to design The Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower was, indeed, a feather in our cap. The fact that the show is centered on Cuba made it very personal for me, for it is where I was born and grew up until the ripe old age of 11½.
I’ve often said we are all born with a talent. The key is realizing that talent. I don’t mean that one has to be the best in the world at whatever it may be, but that one has a gift for something. For me that gift is designing landscapes. I have enjoyed plants, history, and architecture as far back as I can remember, and my field of work encompasses all of these things. This has also given me a very good visual memory. And so here I take you back to my childhood and the influences of my native Cuba that have helped to shape elements of this year’s Orchid Show.
I must have been 10 years old when my two maternal uncles purchased a ranch in the province of Pinar del Rio, about 55 miles from Havana, where we lived. One day, while staying with one of my grandmothers (which my siblings and I did whenever my parents were away traveling) we went for a picnic at the ranch, Las Maravillas de Roja, rather a long name for a ranch.