Helsinki, Leiden, Munich, Berlin and Madrid, quite a few "new" botanical gardens on the 2016-list! Botanical gardens are my happy places and usually a peaceful break in the middle of a big city. After a whirlwind and intense week of Spanish Design this summer, Robert joined me in Madrid to celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary. Our first stop: the calm, sunny and lush Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid.
The entire botanical garden in Madrid is set up like a park with dusty paths (it was 40°C), an arboretum, flower beds, greenhouses and some mystic water & sunrays:
The covered passages through the garden with 90.000 plants and flowers and 1.500 trees, the greenhouse, my favorite part:
The greenhouse has several divisions: tropical, temperate, and desert…
One of the other patios in the garden houses the largest Herbarium in Spain. It contains around a million of different specimens from around the world and their goal is to make all the visuals and information available online and provide researchers from anywhere in the world with this data and encourage preservation.
The entrance of the Jardín Botánico is next to the famous Prado museum, really in the middle of Madrid, but the garden feels particularly quiet, people move slowly, rest on a bench, take their time to appreciate the statues, flowers, trees and plants. Another reason for this slowness was probably also because is was so very hot when we visited 😉
Humid:
Large palms and 1.500 trees in the garden provide lots of shade to stay cool:
A little peek behind-the-scenes at the garden. I always love these parts of a botanical garden so much (more): this is where the gardeners experiment, grow their stock of plants, take care of illnesses… some of them are extra fragile and can not be exposed to the public for that reason, but sometimes they're just too common. It's always a little bit more messy and practical, with too much of a mise-en-scène.
Some early dahlias enjoying the golden hour light:
A bit too cultivated and kitschy for my taste, but quite unusual are these baskets with chicks & hens:
Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid /// Plaza de Murillo, 2 /// 28014 Madrid /// Spain
