It would be easy to miss Madrid’s botanical garden—it’s along a main road, just next to the sprawling Prado museum, but its entrance and signs are off the street. You need to know it’s there to find it.
But missing it would be a shame, and we almost did. We didn’t realize it was there until we were looking for a last Madrid attraction before our train to Seville. It’s not a huge garden, but it’s dense, colorful and well-organized.
As we wandered through the garden we noticed a contrast between areas that appeared formally organized in beds and rows, and others that seemed more free-form, even though they are part of a very orderly system of paths that link the three terraces.
We were there in late June, when many flowers and other flowering plants were in bloom, but some had already passed their time. That only added to the interest as we wandered; the variety of colors that were neither green nor traditional ‘flower colors.’ was quite attractive.
There are a number of unusual features to the Garden, including a rock garden made mainly of lava from the 2021 volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands and a scarecrow in an area devoted to farm crops. It was recognized by George G as the solution to our One-Clue Mystery for the week.
There’s also a playful series of animals that seem almost Lego-like. I won’t identify them here so you can take a try, but I’ve dropped the answers, in order, at the bottom of the page.
The garden was created in 1755 by King Ferdinand VI, but it got its real boost when Carlos III became King of Spain. Carlos was a modernizer and reformer, and deeply interested in science. He had the garden moved to its current location, next to another of his projects: The building we know as the Prado Museum was originally to be a museum of natural science.
A wetland area has a variety of plant and animal life, including bullfrogs.
By the way, if you’re one of those people who are fascinated by convoluted royal titles and dynasties, King Carlos III of Spain also ruled as Carlos I of Parma and Piacenza, Charles V of Sicily and Charles VII of Naples.
At any rate, neither the building of the Prado nor the botanical garden made it through the Napoleonic era. The museum building was finished in 1819, but it took until 1857 before the abandoned garden was rebuilt, with a new greenhouse and replanting of the original terraces, whose plantings were arranged according to their Linnaean classifications.
A place of honor for Linnaeus
From the beginning, Carlos’s intention was not just to exhibit plants but to teach botany, discover new species through expeditions, and to find commercial and agricultural uses for plants. It specialized in plants of the Spanish Empire, for obvious reasons.
The Napoleonic Wars weren’t the only hard times for the garden; from the 1930s on it was generally neglected and underfinanced. In 1974, the garden was closed for renovation to the original plan, and didn’t reopen until 1981.
Aside from the public garden, the Royal Botanical Garden, which is operated by the Spanish National Research Council, publishes a range of scientific journals and maintains a huge database of information about millions of specimens.
And the animals: Panda, White Rhinoceros, and Lynx.
