Urban Landscape, Native Landscape: Jardim Botânico da Ajuda

Friday, March 22, 2013

Jardim Botânico da Ajuda

Jardim Botânico da Ajuda 2012 março

Jardim Botânico da Ajuda 2012 março

Jardim Botânico da Ajuda 2012 março

Click here for more photos fo the Jardim Botânico da Ajuda.

The Jardim Botânico da Ajuda is a beautiful garden in the Lisbon suburb of Belém. There are lovely views from this hillside garden of Belém, the Tagus estuary & the 25 de Abril Bridge, which resembles the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco & was built by the same company. It is quite easy & quick to get here on the train from central Lisbon. The Jardim Botânico da Ajuda has been run by the Instituto Superior de Agronomia of the Universidade de Lisboa since 1910 as part of their teaching & research infrastructure. It covers almost 10 acres on 2 levels. The architecture of the garden follows the Italian Renaissance model of a terrace garden. The upper level contains the botanical collection & the lower level is an ornamental stroll garden with a garden of aromatic and medicinal plants, a garden of plants native to the region of Lisbon, and a forest.

The garden was founded in 1768 & designed by the Italian botanist, Domingos Vandelli of Padua. Vandelli was hired by Dom José I to teach his sons, the princes of Portugal. Vandelli was appointed director of the Royal Botanical Garden of Ajuda in 1791. The royal family had moved to the Palace of Belém from Lisbon after the catastrophic earthquare & tsunami of 1755. This garden was constructed near the palace. It was the first Portuguese botanical garden designed to maintain, study & collect as many species of the plant world as possible. It had 5000 species arranged according to the Linnaean system. (Vandelli had studied with Linnaeus) Before long, greenhouses were added to house plants from the Portuguese colonies of Brazil, Angola & Cape Verde. And the garden was opened to the public. After the death of the second director Felix de Avellar Brotero, the garden went into decline. The lower level was reconstructed in 1869, then the upper level in 1934. The entire garden was restored once again between 1993 & 1997.

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This blog began in 2008 as Metropolitan Gardens to provide information on gardening in Seattle & places like it. Click on Gardening in Cascadia. The blog expanded to include Parks P-Patches Public Gardens in the US, Canada & Europe. Then Nature was added. (The difference between nature & gardens is intent. Nature happens. Gardens are planned.) Many recent posts are not about Seattle, or even Cascadia. They are Urban Landscape: streetscape & architecture. Cascadia is the region including the Cascade Mountains of Washington & Oregon. If you want to contact the blogger, leave a message in comments. Comments are moderated & private messages will not be posted.

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The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.