Buenos Aires Botanical Garden

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Entrance to the gardens

The Buenos Aires Botanical Garden (Spanish official name Jardín Botánico Carlos Thays de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires) is the Botanical Garden of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It's located in the neighbourhood of Palermo, near the Bosques de Palermo, the Buenos Aires Zoo, and the Japanese Garden of Buenos Aires.

The garden was inaugurated on September 7, 1898, following the designs of landscape architect Carlos Thays. Thays and his family lived in an English style mansion located inside the grounds of the gardens between 1892 and 1898, when he served as director of parks and walks of the city. The mansion is currently the main building of the complex.

Winter-house

The area of the gardens that cover 8 blocks is limited by the Santa Fe Avenue, República Árabe de Siria street, Las Heras Avenue, and the Plaza Italia. With a total area of 69,772 m², it holds around 5,500 species of vegetables, as well as a number of sculptures.

In recent years an important community of cats has installed in the area. Attempts to eliminate them have been useless, since the cats are fed by some neighbours, specially old ladies, and people tend to feel empathy for them.

[edit] Collections

The park meets three main different landscape gardening styles; the symmetric, the mixed and the picturesque, recreated in the Roman, French and oriental gardens.

Roman garden

It holds plant species that first century Roman botanic Pliny the Younger had in his villa at the Apennines, such as cypresses, poplars, and laurels.

French garden

With a symmetric French style of the 17th and 18th century.

Oriental garden

In other areas the plants are ordered by origin; from Asia can be seen Ginkgo bilobas; from Oceania Acacias, Eucalyptus and Casuarinas; from Europe oaks, hazelnut trees and olmos; from Africa brackens, palms, and gomeros. There are also others from the Americas, such as sequoias from United States, but mostly from the flora of Argentina.

There are also other sectors were plant specimens are systematically ordered by taxonomic qualification.

[edit] Installations

Inside the park's perimeter is the Municipal Gardening School Cristóbal María Hicken, which depends on the Faculty of Agronomy of the University of Buenos Aires.

The park also contains 33 artistic works including sculptures, busts and monuments. Among these we can name Los primeros Fríos, by Catalan Blay y Fábregas; Sagunto, by Querol y Subirats; Figura de mujer by Lola Mora; and Saturnalia, made in bronze by Ernesto Biondi.

Another attraction are the five winter-houses. The biggest of them, erected in Art Nouveau style, received a recognition in the Paris exposition of 1899. It has a length of 35 meters, and a width of 8, and is considered to be the only winter-house in that style still conserved in the world.

The Botanic Library gathers 1,000 books and 10,000 publications from all around the world, freely available for the visitors. The park also holds a Botanical museum.