Lake Atitlan Botanical Garden Tour
Lake Atitlan Botanical Garden Tour begins with the story of how the Lake Atitlan Garden began.
So, let me begin by saying that when we came here to Guatemala, neither Sylvia nor I had much interest in designing, developing, or certainly working in a garden.
About The Lake Atitlan Botanical Garden Tour
So, let me begin by saying that when we came here to Guatemala, neither Sylvia nor I had much interest in designing, developing, or certainly working in a Lake Atitlan Botanical Garden Tour.
It was a long, slow growth into the connection we have today. We bought our land in 1987, and began construction in 1988. It was a very steep location, averaging about a 30% grade.
We measured about 50 steps down from the road to escape any noise and had our crew begin digging into the hillside to create a spot for our house.
As they dug, we soon realized that we needed to have terraces made to control the soil, which had begun sliding all of the way into the lake 100 yards below when thrown over the edge.
The terracing had seemed like it would be a bigger job than the house, but our guy suggested that we make the terraces of “dry walls”, meaning stacked stone with no cement. He took me to his father’s house, showing a dry wall the house had been built upon 27 years before. Lake Atitlan Historic Garden Tour.
“Start with large stones at the bottom and use smaller ones on top”, he explained. When he and his cousin made a 3′ high wall about 50′ long that cost us $60, we asked him if he could find some other workers. He brought more family, ending up with 5 men.
They spent a year building steps down and terrace walls. We spent more time with them than we did the builders of the house, who had plans to work by. We found that plans in the garden often changed as the boys came to a large rock or such.
Originally published at ethicalfashionguatemala.com.
