Gardening in Spain

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Garden of the Generalife, Granada.

Gardening in Spain has had an evolution in accordance with the different stylistic stamps developed in the art and the Spanish culture, to the time that has been marked by numerous influences along his history, from the Roman and Islamic gardens, going through the Italian, French and English, until the appearance of the avant-garde and the use of new technologies in the 20th century, that beside the development of the design, the urbanismo and the architecture paisajista have ended in a new form to conceive the gardening and his location in the surroundings.

The Spanish garden has been marked by his climate and orography. The floor is generally drier that in his neighbouring countries, Portugal or France, and the solar radiation is more intense, especially in summer, what carried to the creation of gardens of small size and limited in enclosed spaces, no integrated in the landscape as in other countries. A fundamental factor has been the aprovechamiento of the water, scarce in some zones and of uneven distribution according to the different communities of the peninsula. The vegetation of Spain is very varied, since it participates of four different geobotanical regions: Mediterranean, Euro-Siberian, Boreo-Alpine and Macronesian.

In Spain, in addition to parks and gardens of conception generalista, well of character inespecífico or of thematic cut or specialist —like the botanic gardens—, exist numerous varieties of garden according to the region, like the sound, the cigarral, the pazo, the playground or the carmen. The majority of these typologies, of Islamic inheritance, arose in the Renaissance, between the 16th and 17th centuries; in the case of the pazos Galician, although there are previous traces, the best realisations are of baroque period, in the 18th century. Until practically the 19th century the majority of gardens were promoted by the royalty and the aristocracy, until the social changes gestados between the 18th and 19th centuries —especially this last— facilitated the creation of parks and gardens of public titularity for the use and enjoy of all the citizens. In the 20th century have been essential the links of the gardening with the urbanismo, as well as a greater social awareness to the ecology, that has comported the creation of projects increasingly linked to the natural surroundings.

Roman period

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Modern vision of a Roman villa.

The first traces of the practice of the gardening in Spain come from the Roman period, although any of those realisations has arrived until the actuality. The conquest of the Iberian peninsula by the roman Republic initiated in the course of the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC), although it did not complete until time of Augusto. The ancient Rome was very advanced regarding architecture and engineering, knowledges that moved to all his colonies, that saw like this favoured with diverse infrastructures like ways, bridges and aqueducts. The Romans were one of the first civilisations that awarded big importance to the gardening, to which elevated to the category so much of art as of science. As well as in other previous civilisations the gardens had religious purpose and were evocations of the paradise —the "holy garden"—, in Rome his function became secular and ornamental. The roman garden received the influence of the oriental gardens, as well as of the Greeks no by his real models, but by his reflection in the Greek painting of landscape. In the Roman period the work of the gardening specialised, and arose the figure of the topiarius or "paisajista", commissioned of the so much material conception like intellectual and aesthetics of the garden.

The Romans had big agricultural knowledges, and perfected numerous technicians of crop, as well as tools of labranza. Besides, they perfected to a large extent the hydraulic engineering, what allowed them ensure a contribution regulate of water to his crops and gardens, to the time that made them possible the construction of structures linked to the water, like sources, swimming pools, bathrooms and lakes, that in numerous occasions purchased ornamental character and emphasized the beauty of his gardens.

The garden was linked to the domus, the house prototípica roman, where was usual a portico of entrance ornamentado with sculptures, that gave access to a garden of Mediterranean vegetation. This model could give so much in the city as in the field, where arose the villa, a rustic farm that generally served to accommodate middle-class civilians, and that aunaba so much the gardening in the most domestic field like the agricultural exploitation. Generally, the urban gardens organised around a playground (atrium), of form peristilada, configured simétricamente around a longitudinal axis, that served like link of communication between the distinct zones of the house. In the centre of the playground was used to have a pozo, source or lake, and the vegetal elements complemented with ornamental details like mosaics, vases or statues, and even often the walls decorated with paintings to the fresco of subject paisajista. The rural villas presented two zones of ajardinamiento: intensive in the nearest enclosure to the house, with fences recortados and trees podados, flowers of season, sources and statues; and extensivo in the most agricultural zone, of irregular outline, with zones of crop and of forest.

The gardens were used to have structural and architectural elements like porticos and criptopórticos, arches and columns, exedras, swimming pools, wooden kiosks, pergolas, arbours, and even artificial grottos (ninfeos), elements that happened to back traditions gardeners. Regarding the vegetation, was used to group in arriates that purchased diverse forms, of which one of the most usual was the one of the hippodrome. The water ran in abundance through channels and pilones, sometimes with small jets; this type of drivings of water received the name of euripo, by the narrow homónimo that separates Beocia of the island of Eubea, in Greece.

Sight of Conímbriga.

In the Spanish territory find numerous archaeologic rests of roman villas, as the one of Cambre (The Coruña), the Villa The Olmeda in Palencia, the one of Beacon-Pure in Valladolid, the one of Camarzana of Tera (Zamora), the Villa of Camesa-Rebolledo in Cantabria and the Villa of Tower Llauder in Mataró. The model of playground peristilado detects in some rests of villas like the ones of The Caves of Soria, Montijo, Rein, The Pumar, The Santiscal, Green River in Marbella or the domus number 1 of Ampurias. They have found rests of channels and sources in the Villa of the Pasture of The Cocosa (Badajoz), or of lakes in Villa Fortunatus, near of Fraga (Huesca), or in the Villa of Ujal in Benicató (Nules), The Soldán and Bruñel in Quesada (Jaén).

In Conímbriga, at present in Portugal but pertaining in his day to the ancient Hispania, find some of the best examples of Hispanic villas, with a different planimetry to the prototype of roman garden —like the appreciated in Pompeii—, since instead of surrounding the garden a central lake, is the other way around: it is this the one who circunda the vegetal zone. In these villas the model of playground peristilado is more complex, with lateral series of small playgrounds with peristilos secondary.

Apart from the houses and Roman villas, there existed numerous green zones in urban spaces, like gymnasiums, thermae and theatres, a peristyle situated in its back; a clear example is the porticus post scaenam of the Theatre of Mérida, that included a garden with sources, a channel around the perimeter, sculptures and a sundial.

The gardening hispanorromana left a legacy assumed by the back cultures settled in the peninsula, especially regarding the use of inner playgrounds to contain gardens of small dimensions, the agglutination of the external landscape to the house, the employment of the hydraulic resources, or the aprovechamiento of species frutales in the garden, like the vineyard or the olive.

Half age

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Playground of the Arrayanes, Alhambra of Granada.

Islamic garden

The gardening had a big development in the Islamic culture, that valued to a large extent the aesthetic space provided by the garden, evocador of the earthly Paradise. The Islamic garden was heir of the Persian garden (chahar bagh), of the that there are testimonies that situate it previously even to the Egyptian garden, and of the that have arrived relatos like the one of Jenofonte of the park of Sardes built by Ciro, or of the Book of the kings of Ferdousí, that describes the park of 120 hectares built by Cosroes II in Firuzabad, divided in four separate zones by two perpendicular axes, that symbolise the four rivers of the Paradise (water, wine, milk and honey), element that would be re-created with assiduity by the Islamic garden. The abásidas built big parks with gardens and pavilions of re-create in Baghdad and Samarra, around the year 750. This planimetry happened to the Muslim Spain after the conquest of almost all the peninsula initiated in 711 by the Omeyas.

As it interprets of the Koran, the Paradise is something physical, tangible, no merely symbolic as in the Christianity. The Koran employs the term to the-djanna for the Paradise, whose literal translation is «garden». Thus, it put it of the Islamic garden is to evoke the Paradise in the measure of the possible, although without arriving never to his heights of perfection, and like this turns into a source of artistic inspiration. They are numerous the references to the paradise in the literature hispanoárabe:

On the other hand, the difficult conditions of life of the Arab village, in a climate predominantly desértico, did that they valued to a large extent elements like the water and the vegetation, whose conjunction in the «oasis» produced the consideration of the garden like a vergel of appreciated assessment, like a sign of wealth and beauty at the same time. These factors comported to his time to the enclaustramiento of the garden, since when being a very scarce suited to preserve it of odd elements.

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Playground of the Naranjos, Mosque of Córdoba.

In Spain, the garden hispanoárabe saw influenced by the previous roman realisations and other stylistic stamps of European origin, with what quickly differentiated of the rest of Islamic gardens produced in the Near Orient or the north of Africa, the original Muslim territories. Like this, in the terrain of the gardening perceives the assimilation hispanoárabe of the model of roman playground, that however would be so characteristic of the Islamic garden Spanish, whose footprint perdura in numerous playgrounds ladscaped especially in Andalucia.

Another distinctive stamp so much of the garden as of the urbanismo hispanoárabe is his closing, his hermetismo, given the character intimista and reserved of the Islamic culture. Like this, the urban enclosures are used to be walled off, and the houses inside them schedule to the interior, with simple façades, without ornaments, without ostentation. Instead, in his interior deploys all the possible magnificence, with gardens where the main leadership awards to the water, that is the axis vertebrador of any vegetal and ornamental planning. A sign of the importance conceded to the water is his canalisation in resolve to open sky, on the contrary of the concealment of the pipes that is used to be usual in the western field; besides, those resolve were used to decorate with mosaics polícromos, to enhance the beauty of the water in his route. As Tito Red, expert in gardening hispanoárabe, the water is the «paramount element of the design, if there is some common characteristic in the Arabo-Andalusian gardens is his orthogonal outline and the presence of the water marking the main axis of symmetry».

See also

• Spanish garden