Village Gardens
MAGIC L
Hannah Genders tours some unusual gardens while on a cycling holiday in Spain.
ast April, my husband Mike and I had a cycling holiday in Andalusia, Southern Spain. We cycled “The Route of the Moors”, which followed the
Moorish heritage route from Cordoba to Granada – it really is a beautiful area of white villages and olive groves, but the absolute highlight for me, and some- thing I’ve wanted to do for a long time, was a visit to the Alhambra Palace and gardens. Alhambra means “The Red One” in Arabic, and the
Central rill
name is believed to refer to the colour the stone looks in the evening sun as it glows a deep pinky red. The palace and gardens stand on a massive outcrop of rock in the old part of the city of Granada, and the setting alone is incredible in itself; a great swathe of trees under the palace and along the hillside sweep into the streets of the old city. The palace and gardens are accessed by a long up-
hill walk from this part of the city, and they are quite shaded which was a welcome relief on a hot day. We had pre-booked tickets and it’s very advisable to do this as they had completely sold out when we got there. The main palace and inner courtyard gardens
date back to the 13th century and the architecture is heavily Islamic. The outer gardens and buildings are called “Generalife”, meaning Architect’s Garden, and these are extensive and very beautiful. Images of the courtyards and water gardens from these areas are instantly recognisable. The top terraces of the Generalife gardens are laid
out to vegetables and fruit trees, punctuated with large, square stone towers and stunning views out to the Granada plain or back to the Sierra Nevada moun- tains behind. Then as you continue, classic rills of water draw the eye further into the gardens and pick up the main theme of this garden, which is water: the sound of water, running water and still, calming water in the courtyard spaces. In a dry, hot climate like this one, to create paradise
in an Islamic garden was to create an enclosed, shad- ed space with water to cool you on a hot day. From the central rill, you walk into one of the most iconic courtyard spaces, the court of La Acequia, where an impressive colonnade surrounds a central rectangular
48 The Village February 2017
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