A Garden in Cuba

By Louis D Hall

In the heart of the Los Organos mountains, I came across a garden as wild as it is predestined. The morning I walked into the dense humid scents of Orquideario de Soroa, it was 25 degrees Celsius. At home in Scotland it was below zero. Although winter is of course not the best time to see the orchid, nor the flowering garden in its full bloom, it was impossible for me not to be drawn in by the awe of this unimposing hill, nestled within the rolling folds of Artemisa province. Home to over 18,000 orchid specimens, some of the rarest in the world, Orquideario de Soroa is a garden dedicated to the education, cultivation, and conservation of these beautiful flowers. Its genesis, however, is tainted by tragedy.  

Having paid my 400 Cuban pesos (equivalent to roughly $1.20 at the time), I began up the path. It was 8.30 am. There was only me, one or two gardeners dotted about, and the dew that dripped from the leaves of the trees and that stirred inside the flowers. The first plant I saw was a smart line of twenty or so lilac bamboo orchids. They stood somnambulantly, stooping over the stone path that wound its way to the top. Beyond the cortege the flora overflowed, yet immediately I sensed a fine balance forged between the crafted and the unkempt. Like stepping stones to an old riddle that might never be solved, winding schist straights, off-shoots from the path, became staircases leading nowhere, overgrown with double-sided oyster plants, dark blushing philodendrons, and stretching stems of Joseph’s coat, leaves radiant yet unsure whether to be crimson or chrome, clues to a more stated former glory.  

In 1943, Dr Tomás Felipe Camacho, a lawyer, poet, art collector, businessman, and botanist originally from the Canary Islands, acquired some land in Soroa, set deep in the western province of Artemisa: ‘the rainbow of Cuba.’ The plot, a lush domed rise that stems from the low running waters of the Manantiales River, was bought in the belief that living in this environment may help Camacho’s declining health. He was suffering from an illness of the lungs and sought the purer air of the province as a cure. His young daughter, Pilar, and wife joined him.  

The lawyer’s hope was fulfilled: the untainted air of the valley restored his health. The 35,000 square metre botanical wonder that stands today is a testament to a lifetime of craft and the area’s fertile conditions. But, as it is in the truest tales of nature, the life given to Camacho’s garden was born from the passing of something else. In her new home on the hill, his daughter Pilar died aged just 21 years old. Her favoured flower, the flower shewould go out and pick for Camacho with her mother as he regained his strength, was the orchid. Within nine years of his daughter’s death, Camacho had begun to turn this wild hill into a botanical Eden. Years later, after the passing of his wife, he established the garden as one dedicated to the orchid.

At the top of the hill, there is a bust of Camacho himself. Placed next to a crowning tapa cloth tree, his gaze looks out onto the lush El Brujo folds. As I stood on the precipice, a stream of scarlet firecracker plants ran below me: beryl blue sage and a red wine-coloured crown of thorns. And then, mixed within, there was something else. I walked down the path to find a small cave, cut deep into a limestone boulder. Set back in the half-light there was a female figure made from stone, and two lit candles burning at her feet. A small sign stood next to her: Virgen del Pilar, Patronda de Zaragoza, protectora de los marinos — Here she is, Virgin del Pilar, lady of Zaragoza and protector of the sailors of the world. It suddenly felt like I was standing in a garden that belonged to someone whose presence was very near. In that moment, it became clear that Orquideario de Soroa was so much more than just a home of rare plants. It was the legacy of a young woman’s death. Her spirit was the thing that started it all.

Before my visit, I knew the orchid to be a symbol both of fertility and tenderness. An almost human duality. But I had no idea it was one of the most diverse plant families in the world. A welcome revelation. As I discovered, its flowering is potentially limitless — and therefore untraceable. Different varieties of the plant can couple, producing hybrids which never resemble their parents nor can ever be identically recreated. This means that new variants of orchids, already notoriously difficult to classify, are constantly springing up.

There is something fitting in the orchid being that defiant, ever-growing plant. Especially in the unruly beauty of Soroa, where I stumbled upon a hill nurtured into life through the love of a man for his family. Dr Tomás Felipe Camacho died in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1961, just two years after Cuba’s successful revolution that saw the downfall of Batista’s dictatorship. Upon Camacho’s death, the garden was marked a national heritage site by Castro’s government. From 2017 it has been under the care and responsibility of the University of Artemisa, serving both as a research centre and a public botanical attraction. The Camacho family house, containing an ever growing library on orchids, sits painted in pink at the top of the garden, soon to be turned into a museum. It overlooks the hills, rolling wild as far as the eye can see.

LOUIS D HALL is a writer from Scotland with a focus on myth, nature and culture. His debut book In Green is a narrative nonfiction account of a 2000-mile journey he made across Europe alongside an Arabian horse. In 2020 he founded mental health charity The Big Hoof that creates walks with horses across the UK.

Art by Esther Goddard