GARDEN DESIGN IN SPAIN 



285 





Diana. When Philip V was first taken to see them he is said to have stopped 

 admiringly and remarked to his courtiers that though they had cost him 

 three million pesetas he had been amused for three minutes. 



From the scientific point of view gardening has been much neglected in 

 Spain, and such botanic gardens as exist are hardly to be compared with those 

 of other European countries. The study of medicine under the Moors necessi- 

 tated the establishment of botanic gardens, and they are mentioned as early 

 as the time of King 

 Nasr, who laid out 

 experimental gardens 

 at Cadiz, and placed 

 them under the 

 direction of the bot- 

 anist, Al Shafrah. 

 In the sixteenth cen- 

 tury Spain wished to 

 emulate the example 

 of Italy and Holland, 

 who were devoting 

 much attention to 

 botany, and in 1555 

 Dr. Laguna, in his 

 translation of Dios- 

 corides, which he 

 dedicated to Philip 

 II, entreats the King 

 to found a botanical 

 garden which, he 

 curiously says, would 



turn to the benefit of His Majesty's health and at the same time encourage 

 la disciplina herbaria. This request was granted and a portion of the royal 

 gardens at Aranjuez allotted to that object. A few years later, in 1595, 

 the private gardens of Simon Tovar Cortavilla were founded and at the 

 end of the seventeenth century Jaime Salvador formed a remarkable botanic 

 garden at San Juan d'Espe on the banks of the Llobregat,and a most inter- 

 esting herbary at Barcelona, Botanic gardens were estabhshed at Seville 



COVRTVATiO GARDEN AT THE ESCURIAlL^^fADRID. 



