A Surrealist Stowe in Mexico

An Englishman spends 40 years creating a huge landscape garden with follies in the mountainous jungles of Mexico's Huesteca Region. Have we perhaps discovered a hitherto unknown novel by Graham Greene or an unpublished Gabriel García Márquez? No. It's for real. Edward James, the poet and wealthy patron of Surrealism, who already owned West Dean in Sussex, bought the Las Posas ranch at Xilitla in 1944 and, in collaboration with Plutarco Gasbélum Esquer, spent the next 40 years creating a sort of Surrealist Stowe or buffo Bomarzo - a park with canals, pools, and, above all, nearly 40 different follies (above), built in concrete, most of which were left unfinished at his death.

The follies were suitably Surrealist - a library without books, a 'stairway to nowhere', a cinema without seats and
(very Bomarzo) the 'Three-Storey House' with, in fact,
five storeys.
Time is unkind to neglected gardens and jungle even harsher. Las Posas, though doubtless made more romantic by
the jungle, is also being swiftly degraded by its
encroaching vegetation.
Because war, weather and wanderlust can destroy quicker than Man can build, the World Monuments Fund, the planet's heritage watchdog, publishes a biennial Watch List. The 2010 list (published October 2009) contains 94 sites spread over most of the world (www.wmf.org.uk) and highlights Las Posas (The Pools) as a monument at risk (ironically the list also contains Stowe).
Fortunately, the danger has been realised and a trust, the Fondo Xilitla (www.xilitla.org), has been established to save, restore - and make viable as a tourist destination - this unique English jeu d'esprit in remote Mexico.
Given the voracious march of the jungle, we can only hope that this initiative, supported - appropriately, given the construction material - by cement company CEMEX, has not come too late.

Richard Mawrey (December 2009)