By Heidi Trautmann….
With a nostalgic feeling, I drove up to Hikmet’s garden exhibition as I have done all the years before because spring does not really begin without having visited his wonderland. And so did all his friends and fans and we stood together in this paradise and exchanged news while we had the feeling that here, in this pure nature refuge, nothing has changed and hopefully nothing will ever change. I greeted the one or other cactus sculpture, also grandpa and grandma in front of his door, I went around the house and got charmed again by the wild offer of colours, the colours of spring.
The enchanted garden will be open for visits until April 09, daily from 10.00 – 17.00 hrs. Do not miss it, you might not see young Mr. Spring at all this year because he is busy in Hikmet’s wonderland. With his invitation to honour spring, Hikmet Uucam at the same time asks us to remember those who have left the garden of life, the victims of the earthquake, and also very recently his brother. Yes, Hikmet, we shall do that. May they rest in peace.
I attach here my texts of the last years because every year there was something worth remembering.
The last time I visited Hikmet’s garden was in 2019, the sun was shining and his guests, friends, artists, also tourists who had heard about him, were sitting on the wide terrace above Lapta with a view onto the blue sea and the wide sky of spring with a glass of wine in their hands. Click here
Now, in mid-March 2022, after two years of the pandemic it was pretty cold today, with no sunshine and people were wearing their winter coats. Miss Spring, where are you, I asked and she answered: “the sun has taken leave to try to put some sense into Mr. Putin’s head”. Oh my, that may take longer.
Nevertheless, spring has definitely arrived, at least in Hikmet’s garden with all might, up in the hills of Lapta, with all its lovely colourful messengers. Hikmet told me proudly that he found some specimens of spring flowers, which were believed extinct, but he took them home and planted them in his garden to give them a new future.
I greeted the old cacti in his garden, relatives of which I have on my balcony, one of them, I think must be at least 40 years old, if I am not mistaken.
But you also meet old friends at his yearly garden exhibition, regulars, habitués, who come to experience spring in a concentrated form, who come to buy seeds and baby cacti from him.
Again, Hikmet had prepared a special exhibition in his studio house, small nature clay pendants on a leather cord – hung up on a dry branch in his studio, and we all gathered around it to pick our favourites, I bought one to add to my collection. Yes, we should always be aware of the importance of our nature, without a thriving nature we would die.
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