OUT AND ABOUT BOTANICA
story by Bert Krus
For the affected and never satisfied,
on Nicotiana and Frank Bruggeman.

When I was 11 years of age and living on my parents’ farm I already maintained my own garden, which expanded itself each year. Mom and me used to go to a Gardening Centre to find plants and flowers which could live up to the color scheme I had in mind for my plot. Actually, all I wanted was my garden to be variegated with lots of contrast. One day at the market in Emmeloord we discovered flowers called Nicotiana. We bought the Domino Rose Picotee, Domino Lime Green and Domino Red. The new Nicotianas flowered beautifully thanks to polders clayey soil. I loved them for their simple shaped blossom and cheerful colors and never realized that the many cigarettes my father smoked were made from Nicotiana.

At the time, during the seventies, my parents owned a glamourous car my mother had chosen, a brown BMW Coupé 2000 with beige roof and red leather seats. It was her pride and joy and she did not allow my father to smoke in it. But once, after driving for 3 hours on a trip to my grandparents in the south of the country, my father could no longer resist a cigarette and filled the little space with smoke. Mom got angry with him but dad acted like he didn’t hear her. The smoke became so thick in the back seat that it started to nauseate my brothers and me. All of a sudden the three of us messed up mom’s beloved interior by vomiting one after the other. Nevertheless my father never stopped smoking in the car since and my mother provided us with vomit bags.

These days I always have a pack of cigarettes at home. Smoking helps me to reduce stress, but I don’t inhale so I consider myself a non-smoker.

My work shows a particular way of using plants. I am interested in their original habitat and how people try to copy that unconsciously in order to own something exotic. Enjoying a plant from the other side of the world for it’s beauty is very human. At the same time it’s sheer greed, which is human too. If you let go of the greediness, you see the uselessness of it all.

I just experienced such a mood of futility. Fight this mood I came across a Hawaiian site with great Nicotiana Tabacum pictures. The original species grow in the wild over-there. I started fantasizing about leaving the Netherlands to botanically investigate Nicotiana’s natural surroundings. I would find my true balance by practicing the work I was cut out for, among my sweet plants flourishing in their natural state. As I wanted to learn more about the organisation behind the website I read their mission.

It said: management of harmful non-native species in Hawaii and the Pacific.