ORCHID NEWS #47

Pedro Nehring
May 25, 1955 - January 13, 2023

“Inhotim is the intangible of the future.
If we plant, we will have a future. If I achieve this, you can bury me under a tree.”
Pedro Nehring, 2019

“I like the line that harmonizes with the local environment.
You can introduce any species that has something to do with it, but you are not going to plant conifers in the cerrado.
The volumetry is very important, the harmony of colors, of the flowering period, a garden with exuberance but with harmony, with naturalness, which involves the environment with the architecture. The most formal garden is beautiful in England. Each work in its place.
There are no ugly plants. There is a wrongly placed plant, in the wrong place”
Pedro Nehring

"Pedro Nehring is recognized worldwide for the vastness, amplitude and scale with which he elaborated his projects, marked by the harmonious coexistence between the varied species chosen by him. Leaves, trunks, roots and leaves of different sizes, textures and shapes carefully elaborated in his head as a true living autocad, mentally organizing his work while doing it.
In his works, a landscape identity can be perceived. He set up each garden as if it were unique, always in the sense of making a garden with exuberance, but with a certain spontaneity.
He coordinated the entire process, from removing a small bush to placing a 25-meter-high palm tree and a 5-ton stone, alternating angles and inclinations, even after they were installed. The scale is immense, but the detail in the composition of the landscape is equally proportionate, with depth of color and movement.
Born in Teresópolis, Pedro was self-taught and was influenced by his father, José Afonso Vilela César.
He worked at Inhotim for almost 40 years, since the 1980s with occasional breaks.
There, one of Pedro Nehring's main concerns was always to create a pleasant walk along the gardens so that visitors could understand the landscapes as a narrative, so that they could experience and observe the genetic diversity of native and exotic flora. After having carried out landscaping in the early years of Bernardo Paz's farm, which would later become Inhotim, Pedro toured the country, mainly through the Southeast, South and Bahia. Until, in 2010, three years after the official opening of Inhotim, he returned to Brumadinho when he was summoned again to give meaning to the landscape, which was successively expanded to recover the visual and environmental identity of the space that was being lost.
The work carried out by Pedro Nehring in Inhotim is undoubtedly the most representative of his career. However, the landscaper also worked on hundreds of projects in dozens of Brazilian cities, spread across nine states (Bahia, Espírito Santo, Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina and São Paulo) , in addition to the Federal District. In Rio de Janeiro, from 1975 onwards, Nehring worked for several construction companies on works in the capital of Rio de Janeiro, in Búzios and in Itaipava. In Mato Grosso do Sul, Nehring lived from 1980 to 1983, carrying out public and private works on farms. In Belo Horizonte, he carried out landscaping projects in houses. One of the best known is the owner of a vehicle rental company, in a neighborhood in the South region, in 1985. While still in the capital of Minas Gerais, he also worked at the Department of Parks and Gardens, in 1984/85, when he worked in the afforestation of the Avenida Cristiano Machado and in the landscaping project of the Abílio Barreto Museum, the main cultural/historical institution that takes care of the memory of Belo Horizonte.In São Paulo, from the 1990s onwards, Pedro carried out several landscaping works in partnership with the architect Marcos Tomanik, mainly in residences, stud farms and farms. In Rio de Janeiro, from the 1970s onwards, he carried out several works in the capital of Rio de Janeiro; in Itaipava, in Serra de Petrópolis; and in Búzios, one of the most popular resorts on the coast of Rio de Janeiro. In addition, he designed and carried out the landscaping project for Casa da Itália, at the Costa Brava club, during the 2016 Olympic Games.
Building a garden with botanical diversity mainly involves knowledge and access to plants. That's why, throughout his career, Pedro Nehring not only did a lot of research, but also became a seed picker on all, yes, all the trips he took, whether alone or with his family".
Extract from texts by Bruno Moreno

In a note, the Inhotim Institute lamented the death of the landscaper, noting that he "sought to understand and, above all, reflect the cycles of the year in the materialization of his projects".
“Jardim Veredas (another project by Nehring), and all of his projects at Inhotim, are the result of periodic observations, unique knowledge about plant cycles and perception of nature's time”, says the note.

“All ceases when the ancient muse sings when greater evil or good arises.”

That's how dear grandpa Vilela used to say and that his son Pedro learned and remembered so well.
And today silence reigned... well, the muse was silent.
What to say after such a sudden departure?!?
Yes, I know that no matter what I say, nothing will bring him back...
But words, believe me, have power over life and death...
It was through them that God created everything that exists and it is through them that I pay tribute to my husband, father, grandfather, uncle, cousin, brother, friend, landscaper, musician and artist Pedro Henrique Nehring Cesar.
The world today mourns your departure!
Out of the ordinary vigor and strength.
We are talking about a man who has always planted trees...
Whether he was 25 years old when he started planting trees on Avenida Cristiano Machado as an advisor to the Environmental Secretariat of the Parks and Gardens Board of Belo Horizonte...
Whether at 67 years old as a landscaper, Director of Parks and Gardens at the largest botanical garden in the world, Inhotim.
If there's one thing Pedro Nehring did, it was planting trees.

It's been 42 years not just planting trees, but saving trees, transplanting from one side to the other as if it were the very finger of God doing what no scientist has ever done.
And yes, it had to be surrounded by them - scientists and botanists - who sought to understand, monitor and document the success in reproducing rare, native and exotic species... to translocating adult species and so many other feats that many could admire up close!
If planting trees is in itself a noble act that represents a fresh start... imagine what it means to take care of them and accompany their growth, their flowering, fruiting and then collecting their seeds and sowing, sowing and multiplying species where the limits are given only by space and time.
Innumerable square meters were planted, innumerable species, infinite individuals, impossible to count... even because nature took charge of continuing its legacy, multiplying it infinitely in a chain that will follow for all posterity!
And yes, this man's generosity extended to all of nature and to future generations who today honor his legacy!
A blessed grandfather...
A dedicated father...
A faithful and passionate lover...
A diligent uncle and brother...
A dear and beloved friend...
An acclaimed landscaper...
Not only his family, but the world and all of nature says goodbye and cries for his departure.
Today we don't say goodbye, but we say a "SEE YOU LATER!" or “SEE YOU SOON!”
For we know that at some point we will meet you again in the heavenly regions!
Here it will always be alive in us.
Here lies a great man, strong, courageous, with unshakable faith and great love who served God by sculpting gardens and leaving a precious legacy that will last for infinite generations.
"I am a bird that lives in flight..."

I met Pedro Henrique Nehring Cesar or simply Pedro Nehring when I worked at the Inhotim Institute, but even before meeting him in person, I started to admire his work in the gardens of that institute.
My admiration soon grew when we created the Vandário do Inhotim, and I saw Pedro working.
He immediately understood all the needs of the space and even with his own hands, from one day to the next, he did the landscaping, planted palm trees, made paths placing stones where there were none, harmonizing the entire surroundings. All inside his head, there was no physical outline.
Besides, he knew how to have it made and he knew how to make it himself. I often saw him replanting, moving plants around to look exactly as he saw them inside his head.

Later, on a visit to Inhotim, after I left, he took me to see the new garden he was creating. It was Jardim Veredas, started in 2014 and inspired by Guimarães Rosa, the paths in the north of Minas Gerais. Another amazing landscape created by Pedro Nehring.
I still don't know his last great work, Jardim Sombra e Água Fresca, an area of 32,000 m², where approximately 700 species of plants and fruit trees can be found. Visiting Inhotim is getting to know the legacy of this great landscaper who recently left us, where he worked for almost 40 years".

- Delfina de Araujo, curator of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden Orchidary

“It feels natural.
And that is a great virtue of a great landscaper: being able to establish gardens, with little time, so that they have that vitality that makes them look like they have been there for a long time.”

- Lucas Sigefredo, director of the Inhotim Botanical Garden

“My father painting a garden is like painting a live picture. He is very detail oriented. And it's where he likes it, so there's no way to delegate. If he leaves it there and they do it differently, he changes everything later. He's the one who paints the picture, there's no way to paint with him. His work has a very strong identity.
He says that nature is perfect. So, he takes what he has in that region, uses local things, as if it were an extension of what God made. His inspiration is bigger than the real thing.
The characteristic is that it does not seem to be something assembled. It's very organic. Of course, he has my grandfather (José Afonso Vilela César) as a reference, as well as Burle Marx himself, among others. But he studies a lot and recycles himself.
He was imitated a lot, since the work of Antônio Cláudio (in the Mangabeiras neighborhood in Belo Horizonte, in 1985) and, also for that reason, we can say that he created a style.”

- Daniella Doyle, journalist, daughter of Pedro Nehring

Thus was born Inhotim. A place that never ends.
By Bernardo Paz

The first phase of landscaping began in 1986 and was led by landscaper Pedro Nehring, my childhood friend, who planned, designed and executed the gardens in an area of approximately fifteen hectares. Countless species of native Brazilian palm trees and other exotic ones from various regions of the world were implanted, as well as shrubs and tropical herbaceous trees that developed very well in the place. The landscaping project always sought exuberance, but also a lot of harmony between the species, thus generating lightness and spontaneity. As if he were sculpting nature, the artist Pedro Nehring harmonized the gardens of Inhotim with paths, stairs and patios with huge quartzite stones, pink crystal, very rare today, always looking for a way that would avoid denouncing a creation brought about by the intervention of man.