Gardening
Spanish garden
Denis Wood
To many of us the term 'Spanish gardens' implies the enclosed gardens and patios seen chiefly in the hot south of Spain, in Andalusia. These derive their genius from Arab tribes. To these invaders from the parched land of Africa, water and shade were among the most desired things in the world and their instinctive love of flowers and scent and decoration had by then been sharpened and refined by contact with civilisations of other countries, Persia, Syria and Cyprus, which they had conquered.
There had long been Arab raids in Spain but it was not until AD 756, when the Omeyyad Abderrahman captured Cordoba and set up a dynasty, that Muslim rule was established. In Cordoba itself the Patio de los Naranjos is divided in the middle into three rectangles planted with orange trees, all connected at their bases to irrigation channels fed by the overflow of fountains in each of the three rectangles. This is an outdoor extension of the unforgettable Mezquita, the CathedralMosque with its nineteen aisles and its 1,000 pillars of green and violet marble, granite and jasper. The Cathedral patio at Seville is similar in intent, with orange trees again fed with water through brick-lined channels and with exquisite small fountains. These have been much illustrated, nowhere better than in the drawings of Mrs . Villiers-Stuart's book, Spanish Gardens.
The basins of the fountains are low, and the jets themselves also low, rising not more than six inches or a foot, pensive and in a way inexorable, giving a feeling of eternity. The smallness of the jets is in striking contrast to the high splashing urgent cascades of Italy and France.
If one were to look for a formula for these patios one might consider first the earlier ones and decide that the indispensable elements are enclosure for privacy, water in canals and pools and gentle fountains not only actually to cool the air but also to give an impression of coolness, a floor decorated in some way with pebble mosaic, marble, inset tiles or coloured gravel, and above all orange trees. Orange trees are the quintessential plants in these gardens, their infallibly beautiful branching structure and fruit • glowing from between the large evergreen leaves.
The Alcazar at Seville, rebuilt in the time of Pedro the Cruel, is a large garden, sixteen acres and fully developed. Horseshoe arches to arcades round the side, the whole floor covered with ochre gravel, many pools and fountains, some mild water surprises and in partiscular luxuriant planting. Besides
• orange trees, whose fruit lies prodigally fallen on beds and paths, oleander, tall palm trees, cypresses, hedges of myrtle and box, arum lilies and notably acanthus effectively planted in the shade.
This kind of Spanish garden reached its apotheosis at Granada in the Alhambra and the Generalife, built between 1354 and 1391, both high above Granada and from which there are tremendous pro spects of the city. In the gardens of the former are the patio de la Alberca: at one end a low fountain jet in a small basin overflows down a narrow channel into a large pool filled with goldfish. The patio de los Leones is surrounded by central arcaded courts and in the middle of the pool twelve resolute lions spout water; four small canals run from the four sides of the central basin, representing probably the four rivers of paradise; also the patio de los Cipresses with its four cypresses and the patio de Daraxa with its central fountain brought there by Charles V.
The Generalife stands above the Alhambra. It has a long narrow central canal with, this time, taller fountain jets playing inwards from both sides and on either hand of a flight of steps rills of coursing water making cool handrails. The decoration is widely extravagant, every square inch of surface covered with a dado of coloured tiles, painted piaster stucco or wood ornament in geometric interlacings and decorative lettering, the windows covered with wooden lattices, slim pillars ending in stalactite capitals supporting horseshoe arches with elaborately intricate detail.
This is all a far cry from the classic severity of the Acropolis, from tffe I•easoned logic of Vauxle-Vicomte and our own gentle dreaming landscapes. It is the 'Thousand and One Nights' where, in the cool of the evening and when the gardens are lit at night, one walks hand in hand with one's chosen Scheherazade of the hour.
It is all enchantment, and when we have to leave, looking back at the snow-streaked Sierra Nevada, we too feel the lament of the departing Moors: "Granada, my beloved: 0 Granada I shall never see thee again."
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