Far from the mainstream tourism circuit, dozens of islands handmade from native totoro reeds float off the Peruvian shores of Lake Titicaca.

The Uros Islands provide inspiring lessons in sustainable building and local sourcing. Nearly every item in this collection of photos (taken on a recent trip to Quantati Island) was hand crafted from the reeds growing along the lake's banks--boats, toys, furniture, watchtowers and, of course, the islands themselves. Every two weeks, residents bolster the very ground they walk on with additional reeds as the bottom layers start to rot away.

These are the same reed boat folks that helped build the boat in Kon-Tiki ... Kon-Tiki was the raft used by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl in his 1947 expedition across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands..
The lake folks have always used the reeds to make floating islands they have lived on for centuries.. it's a great way to avoid contact with the silly warrier land dwellers... the inca's..
and you can avoid the Inca land tax...


Again.. everything you see in the picture above is made from the reeds... excepting for the hill in the distance behind the floating island of reeds... everything else is made of reeds also...
in the first set of pictures... the lady in the house... the framework of the building... which looks like lumber is bunches of reeds.. sheathed with pannels made up of reeds woven together.. sustainability although it requires them to be renewing it all as it breaks back down in the water..

here's a building ... the one in the background has a solar pannel on it's roof...
the second is a few buildings of a school on another reed island





and a lovely view of a man building a boat on his own little island...

with another of the islands in the distance in the lake..


OH...and you can book a stay at the reed hotel there...

I'm late , but here is another
WOW!!!!!!!!
Love natural wonders...

Gordon, where does their food come from?
Can anything be grown on those reed/islands?

How beautiful!

Those are fabulous, Gordon! My Dad made a tiki hut out of palm fronds in our backyard for parties. He used old telephone poles as the corners. Creative guy!

Becky.. yes a work of art.. and love
Sharon.. well they fish.. and dry them... I didn't see anything growing on them.. but reeds .. we know you can put a container anywhere..and they are near the shore.. and this regular island in the lake... looks like you could grow things on the terraces... there's a temple on the top of this island..
suposedly Machu Pichu was all terraced and built as a horticultural study center.. to make special food for the Inca.. seems as a whole terraced mountain side provides a bunch of different microclimes depending on it's placement regulating the ammount of sun and water .. they had 100's of varities of potatoes there... [ likely not good for the floating islands ] but when the explorers came.. they only brought that big potatoe back to Europe..well that was the only one they wanted to grow.... guess the incas knew if you only grew one you'd get a famine some years..
Charleen... they were crafty folks there... and they did/made everything with the same material

Awesome photos

Incas were very wise people. So their decendants got to have inherited part of their intelligence.
Right, Gordon???

Amazing culture.
Totally self sufficient.

The thread "Secret Garden" in Garden Art forum
New link to my Secret Garden.

I have seen the few remaining works of Axel Erlandson when we went to Gilroy Gardens in Gilroy, CA in spring of 2007. Indeed it is fantastic and inspiring! At least some of his works still survives to this day! If you love nature and plants, you will enjoy this old fashioned theme park. From the theme park write up, Axel Erlandson used sycamore trees for his living art. The trees are fondly called as circus trees because of their odd shapes.




There are modern topiary sculptures around the park which are also a delight to see:

Beautiful, Tarev!!
Lucky you to get to see them.

Gorgeous, Love them. What wonderful trees. Nice pictures.
Beautiful happy Ladies too. You can see they love them..

I want the giraffe, Tarev! How cool is that?

That last one reminds me of Loc Ness Monster loops...

Charlene... well these lake people although clever wern't exactly decended from the incas... as the islands were built back then to keep themselves safe and away from the incas.. so it's kind of unlikely they were decendents.. there was a vast native popuilation there when the incas came/arose and started taking over.. the incas likely evolved from earlier ruling civilizations.. the natives were allways on the short end of the stick... and these wanted to keep to themselves away from it all.. with no conscriped slavery / labor.. and other servitude methods.. the Incas had to rule and increase their wealth and power....these indians
had already run to the highest part of the country.. in the highest lake in the world... and then moved onto floating islands out in the lake... they were definately trying to distance them selves from it all..
Great photos Tarev... ...yes ya'll look like you were having fun there.. .... and your pumpknins were great... very personable and scarey
Irish tradition has it that Carving Pumpkins dates back to the
eighteenth century and to an Irish blacksmith
named Jack who colluded with the Devil and was
denied entry to Heaven. He was condemned to
wander the earth but asked the Devil for some
light. He was given a burning coal ember which he
placed inside a turnip that he had gouged out.

Thus, the tradition of Jack O'Lanterns was born
- the bearer being the wandering blacksmith - a
damned soul. Villagers in Ireland hoped that the
lantern in their window would keep the wanderer
away. When the Irish emigrated in their millions
to America there was not a great supply of turnips
so pumpkins were used instead.

Great legend, Gordon. Recently Chris had an article on that very subject. Fun article, too:

http://garden.org/articles/vie...

Interesting how legends made their way down to us.

You've really got to have some patience to see the end results with those trees. But how beautiful!

Lovely Halloween piece there Chris... thanks for filling in my knowledge of it's beginning..
like so many things involving plants.. you've got to start early in life to enjoy the fruits of your labor.. like the monkey puzzle tree.. an evergreen with a distinctive bark... with pyramid structers up the trunk.. which would make climbing for a monkey a puzzle it seems.. it's cones bear fruit like pine nuts.. but it takes 40 years for them to mature enough to do so.. so few people are willing to start them commercially... when started they can live for 1000 years.. it's the national tree in Chile.. a georgeous dark green.. with a rough brown bark...and great nuts..