Gardenia Shevardnadze - Place for Inspiration
By GvantsaTurmanidze
Tuesday, November 27
Imagine, not very far from the noisy city, you can enjoy the vibrant greenery in one space even in autumn. A little café is also there on the nursery territory of Gardenia Shevardnadze where healthy food and hot drinks are served with the chef's special cake. This is a magical atmosphere created by Zura Shevardnadze.
In this age of social media, you can easily find photographs and articles about it, but it is an incomparable joy to walk through this green oasis.
It’s been 10 years since the creation of Gardenia, counting its 11th winter this year and still, according to the owner, there’s so much more to be done in the future.
“Gardenia is a little decorative plants nursery, where you can purchase decorative plants for your garden, balcony, terrace, home or office”, informs Gardenia’sFacebook page, in addition, it offers “Green Lessons” for children in decorative gardening, and also provides services in landscape architecture and event decoration. Now, there is also a hotel with only 6 rooms provided for special guests, planned and designed by the owner himself.
Good knowledge of botany and biology combined with love and passion is very evident at Gardenia. Honest to his work, Zura inspires others too by his beautiful displays of the space, such as multiple decorations of flowers and plants, the tasty and very specific choice of interior/exterior design, careful arrangement of the nursery with little pathways, many special vintage pieces are embellishing this dreamlike environment.
In bits and pieces, I learned about a lifelong love of plants and gardening of Zura Shevardnadze. He talks about his admiration of his grandmother, who was the main participant in the formation of his personality and his interests. She would always appraise everything that little Zuradid.“This kind of support is extremely important for everyone, especially for children”, said Zura. “That’s exactly what helped me become the person I am today. I am happy to have lived in an atmosphere where everything I did was appreciated. I had the best people around me, they were always devoted to their work, principles and values. This is something that is lost today – devotion towards what you do. Some people do not understand the meaning and importance of these words. Books have never attracted me so much, I didn’t even study some subjects at school or at the university, I would rather communicate with some special people, who worked in the fields and farms besides teaching at schools, like my teachers, and I have learned a lot more from them by following their unique wisdom”, was Zura’s comments.
Fascinating is Zura’s interest in handicrafts and authentic objects, he travels to different regions of Georgia to collect and purchase everything he likes from different villages. A very special part of his collection is traditional costumes and tablecloths with beautiful embroidery, with unusual and brave use of colors, naïve and primitive themes, which are handmade by women living in Ghorjomi village in high mountains of Adjara.
Zura is grateful for having the chance to visit different countries like India, Morocco, Armenia, Azerbaijan and cities, such as Bonn, Berlin, Dresden, Frankfurt, to see several gardening expositions, and privileged to work at world famous botanical gardens, to see the rarest plants but nevertheless, he believes that everything is best at its origin, therefore, it is important to maintain and take care of what we’ve got, flora and fauna of our country, which is very rich and diverse from region to region and through the diversity of different zones, like alpine, sub-alpine, desert, marsh or forests and permanent snow zones…“Nature knows best”, added Zura Shevardnadze.
Lastly, when I asked Zura about his future plans, he explained that he is in the process of developing a new idea, which is a time-consuming creative project and involves turning the existing nursery into a garden with Georgian elements, where he will lay out only Georgian flowers and plants with the collection of his favorites.
