Real Jardin Botanico
The night before we arrived, the low in Madrid was 28 degrees, and this was evidently not the first freeze. The botanical garden was therefore not blooming, but like all well designed gardens, it had a fine winter coat.
The garden has a backbone of huge old specimen trees from around the world, and these were in high fall color. The camera just can’t quite catch the way the leaves glowed in the sun. The very yellow tree is a ginko.
The short Chinese boxbush hedges that defined all the beds were freshly clipped,
so the air had the fragrance of box. The grasses stood up in dry plumes, and
the vegetable garden was neatly planted with winter fare: baby purple cabbages
and broccoli and Brussel sprouts.
In the herb garden, a 12-year-old boy and his father were smelling the leaves of the different plants and talking about them, which I thought was kind of cool.
Next: Parque del Retiro