Brazil is a land of astounding beauty and unsurpassed diversity. It is also the birthplace of Roberto Burle Marx, one of the most influential and groundbreaking landscape artists of the 20th century. In addition to introducing modernist landscape architecture to Brazil, he was also a noted painter, printmaker, musician, ecologist, and naturalist.

Burle Marx eschewed typical European geometrical garden design and brought to the Brazilian landscape (and to the world) the use of colorful native species in conjunction with abstract and cubist patterns. C. Colston Burrell explores Burle Marx’s home and studio, where he collected and studied the native plants found in the jungles of Brazil, as well as private gardens and parks he created for friends and municipalities. 

Burrell is a lecturer, garden designer, and photographer. The author of 12 gardening books, he has twice won the American Horticultural Society Book Award.

The March 31 online program is sponsored by Smithsonian Associates, and is $25 for Smithsonian members, $30 for nonmembers. Register at www.smithsonianassociates.org