At the opposite side, a small fountain reflects a sculpture of Aphrodite, protector goddess of gardens, which is sitting on the edge.
The mythological scene, supported by intermittent cypress walls, and the collection of citrus, converges in a generous esplanade that structures linearly the garden. These structures were designed to shelter citrus collections in winter, in gardens where, not having the appropriate climate, they were, by no means, ready to give up growing them.
Later, France and Germany, where the citrus collecting gave not only an aesthetic and botanical quality to the garden, but also it was even a symbol of power, evolving into a type of flower constructions, the “Orangeries”. Terraced gangways to show the citrus collection, remembering those Valencian gardens whose description amazed so much the Medici that instituted it in Italy. Through the whisper of water, a deep and diffuse information existing in our mind appears and materializes through crossing roads, enclosed garden, support walls where orange and lemon trees form trellises which tell us about the ancient techniques of crop. … “Look how the cypress darken in meadows, look at the forbidden groves where the shapes with marble gestures are long waiting, whose eyes are upon us …” Thus, people are not watching the statues, but sculptures are those that are observing with long look and waiting for people to tell their story: They remind us Rilke’s poems, where the human hopes and disappointments are living in places like the gardens where build up an inner world. The sculptures themselves tell the same story, located at ground level, as another visitor. Because of that, the desperate nymphs became elm, willow and poplar, respectively, as we could see them in the garden. According to mythology, Hercules, to become a hero, beat down the dragon and he managed to steal the golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides. At the same time, the existing urban landscape is now part of the new garden, of the reflection of adjacent trees in water, of palm silhouettes that bind to others in the distance, of the mix of citrus smell in the air, of the guiding geometry.īesides, the garden also talks to visitors and tells them a tale: about Hesperides, the nymphs who guarded the golden apples which Hera had planted in her garden. There is a sought reciprocity, a dialogue between the garden with its surrounding even from outside the walls, the garden is part of the urban landscape: its trees blend with the vegetation of the Botanical Garden, the green skyline frames the background domes, without hiding or excluding them, but attracting them inside the space. Therefore, we could say that the garden provides a fruitful interaction between surround urban landscape and visitors. Opposite to the main current choice in larger cities of the so-called “green zones”, understood and offered to the citizen as consuming material, our option was to design a garden as a place that would provide a kinder relationship with nature, where contemplation and simple fact of being in the garden are the main targets, knowing we are part of it since the moment we pass through the walls and find ourselves in a different atmosphere. In fact, the project is just the answer to the questions we have been suggesting, both the specific location of the garden and the purpose of providing new languages to the context of nowadays urban landscape.