Buenos Aires Botanical Garden
The Buenos Aires Botanical Garden (Spanish: Jardín Botánico Carlos Thays de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires ) is a public garden in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires . It is located in the Palermo district , in the north of the city. The garden is bordered by Avenida Santa Fe , Avenida Las Heras and Calle República Árabe Siria. Together with the zoo , the Parque Tres de Febrero and the Japanese Garden , it forms a coherent recreational area for residents of the capital.
overview
In 1996 the Botanical Garden was declared a national monument. It has an area of almost 70,000 m² and has 5,000 species of plants, trees and shrubs as well as a number of sculptures, monuments and five greenhouses.
The garden, like many other parks and squares, was created by the Franco-Argentine landscape architect Carlos Thays and opened on September 7, 1898. Thays lived with his family in a villa in the park between 1892 and 1898, during the construction period.
The park is divided into three different zones: one in the style of Roman antiquity , one French and one "oriental":
The Roman garden is characterized by trees that the amateur botanist Pliny the Younger had in the garden of his villa in the Apennines , including cypresses , poplars and laurel .
The French garden is laid out in the symmetrical style of the 17th and 18th centuries.
The “oriental” garden is home to plants from Asia, including ginkgo trees , from Oceania, including acacia , eucalyptus and casuarina , European plants such as oak and hazelnut and plants from Africa, including bracken and palm trees.
There are also many plants from North and South America, such as sequoias and silk floss trees and an extensive collection of native vegetation.
building
In addition to a botanical museum, the garden also houses the municipal horticultural school, named after Cristóbal María Hicken, which works with the Faculty of Agriculture at the Universidad de Buenos Aires . The five greenhouses are an attraction for visitors. The largest of them is built in Art Nouveau style and comes from the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889 . It has a length of 35 meters, is 8 meters wide and is home to 2500 tropical plants. The park's library has 1,000 books and 10,000 other publications from all over the world.
There are also 33 works of art on display in the park, including sculptures, busts and monuments. Worth mentioning are Los primeros Fríos by the Catalan sculptor Miguel Blay y Fábregas , Sagunto by Querol y Subirats , Figura de mujer by Lola Mora and Saturnalia , a bronze sculpture by Ernesto Biondi . The Indicador Meteorológico Monument , designed by José Markovich, was a gift from the Austro-Hungarian community of Buenos Aires on the occasion of the Exposición Internacional del Centenario in 1910.
In recent years the botanical garden has become home to many abandoned domestic cats. Garden management and security personnel have not been able to prevent this so far. Attempts to remove the cats met with resistance from local residents and animal welfare organizations. The problem would not be solved by driving away the cats already living in the park, as sometimes a new cat is added every day. Those interested in animal welfare now work as volunteers, feed them, find a new home and take care of vaccinations and veterinary care.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Protection of cats in the botanical garden - accessed on April 15, 2010 (Spanish) ( Memento of the original from June 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
literature
- Mimi Böhm: Buenos Aires, Art Nouveau ; Ediciones Xavier Verstraeten; Buenos Aires, 2005
- Armando T. Hunziker: Flora Fanerogámica Argentina ; Raymond Sutton Books 1997 ISSN 0040-0262
Web links
- Information on the Botanical Garden on "Palermo Online"; accessed on April 15, 2010 (span.)
- Municipality: Jardín Botanico ; accessed on April 15, 2010 (span.)
Coordinates: 34 ° 34 ′ 57.5 ″ S , 58 ° 25 ′ 2.5 ″ W.