How to see Monty Don’s Spanish gardens (and where to stay) (2024)

Cracking job that Monty Don has got. He’s made a career out of cutting, pruning, planting and weeding and can now be seen on BBC2 and iPlayer enjoying a grand tour of the gardens of Spain. Their roots lie deep in extinct caliphates and the attempts of the 8th-century Muslim conquerors to create not just earthly imitations of paradise but also a sustainable agronomy. Irrigation was key, and the Moors arrived as experts in that field: the hypnotic tinkle of a fountain in an Andalusian garden is often the consequence of an extraordinary system of ancient acequias, using gravity to bring water from miles away.

Sadly, not all the gardens Don sees are open to the public, but, having visited all of those that are, I’ve picked out the best in the show, adding how to get there and places to stay nearby that either have their own plots of earthly paradise or are somehow connected to the featured gardens. If you can only visit one, though, make it Pazo de Oca in Galicia.

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1. Free-view plants in Madrid

Although many of Don’s gardens aren’t open to the public, you can visit two in Madrid free of charge. The first is Patrick Blanc’s CaixaForum Vertical Garden, just off the Paseo del Prado (caixaforum.es). It’s more spectacular than CaixaBank’s interior garden featured in the show and is just across the road from the gorgeous Real Jardin Botanico, which has more than 5,500 species, including medicinal plants, and tropical specimens in greenhouses. April, May and June are the most colourful months and entry is free on Tuesday mornings — otherwise £3 (rjb.csic.es). Don had a look at the jungle at the back of Atocha Station (free), and so should you if you’re waiting for a train. But he missed the gardens at the Museo Sorolla — one modelled on La Troya garden in the Alcazar of Seville and another on the Generalife in Granada (£2; cultura.gob.es) — and the neoclassical Jardines de Sabatini, which are just as grand but less frequented than El Retiro Park (free; madrid.es). Stay at the Palacio de los Duques Gran Melia, ten minutes from the Jardines de Sabatini and with its own classical courtyard garden and a rooftop pool.
Details Room-only doubles from £392 (melia.com). Fly or take the train to Madrid

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2. Imperial parterres at El Escorial

An hour northwest of Madrid in the Sierra de Guadarrama stands El Escorial: palace, monastery and the biggest Renaissance building in the world. Built by Philip II — aka Philip the Prudent and King of England by dint of his marriage to Mary I — the palace and monastery have 4,000 rooms, 15 miles of corridors and 88 fountains, plus an art collection including works by El Greco, Ribera, Tiziano and Velázquez. The surrounding parterres, now planted with boxwood, served as experimental beds for plants such as tomatoes and vanilla imported from the Spanish empire, and there can be few gardens anywhere that evoke such a sense of power and control (£12; patrimonionacional.es). Hotel Florida sits on a chestnut-shaded street so close to El Escorial that, if you book one of the simple rooms at the front of the property, you can almost look through the palace windows. From Madrid, the best option is the 664 bus, which takes 55 minutes from the Moncloa interchange (£7.20 return; madrid.avanzagrupo.com).
Details B&B doubles from £68 (hflorida.com). Fly or take the train to Madrid

3. Moorish pools in Toledo

The Palacio de Galiana lies on the south bank of the Tagus outside the walls of Toledo: the countryside leisure palace of the 11th-century King Al Ma’mun. Over the next nine centuries it was destroyed in the reconquista, rebuilt as a convent, rebranded as the love nest of the 8th-century Princess Galiana and Charlemagne (it really wasn’t), then allowed to crumble back into the dust of La Mancha. Resurrected again, it’s now home to an exquisite and wonderfully peaceful re-creation — with Italianate touches — of the original Islamic gardens, complete with reflecting pool and symmetrical beds that are somehow enhanced by the random spires of Tuscan-style cypresses (£7; palaciodegaliana.es). Take the 40-minute train from Madrid’s Atocha station to Toledo (from £23 return; renfe.com) and it’s then a 15-minute walk to the Palacio de Galiana. Like the Palacio, but in the heart of Toledo, the Medina Mudejar is an ancient property snatched from dereliction and carefully restored. It has five riad-style rooms, plus Arab baths in the vaulted basem*nt.
Details Room-only doubles from £77 (hotelmedinamudejartoledo.com). Fly or take the train to Madrid

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4. Medieval calm near Barcelona

The four horsem*n of the tourism apocalypse — cheap flights, cruises, Airbnb and Instagram — have not been kind to Barcelona. They’ve brought with them fast food, Segways, imported souvenirs, stags, hens and more but you’ll see none of the above in the stillness of the gardens of the Monestir de Pedralbes. Built in 1327 in what was then countryside to the north of the city, the garden is a re-creation of the medieval herbarium, within a quadrangle of three-tiered cloisters. It’s not huge, but it’s the most tranquil spot in Barcelona (£4, or free after 3pm on Sundays; monestirpedralbes.barcelona). Take the S1 or S2 train from Plaça de Catalunya to Sarria, then the L12 to Reina Elisenda, from where it’s a ten-minute walk to the gardens (£4.50 return; fgc.cat). In Barcelona, three hotels with gardens come to mind: the Petit Palace Boqueria Garden in Gotica (B&B doubles from £148; petitpalaceboqueriagarden.com); the Alma just off the Passeig de Gracia, where the owner used a crane to lift his trees over the roofs of the block (B&B doubles from £346; almahotels.com); and, next block up, past Casa Mila, the H10 Casa Mimosa, which wins, because its garden has a pool.
Details B&B doubles from £263 (h10hotels.com). Fly or take the train to Barcelona

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5. Palm groves near Alicante

Build a city and an agricultural economy in a location that receives less than 300mm of rain per year? Easy, said the Moors who built Elche, inland from Alicante (it’s now a 30-minute train journey from the city, from £6.50 return; renfe.com). Find a river, then abstract water via an arterial canal, dig 20 branches, use gates to control the flow and build everything so that it will still be functioning 900 years later. There are more than 45,000 date palms in the Unesco-listed Palmeral de Elche, planted in rectangles to shade the vegetable gardens in the middle, their irrigation controlled by a system that apportions water to each plot on a 37-day rota. It’s an ingenious urban oasis that will astonish any gardener, and it’s only a 30-minute train journey from Alicante’s beaches. The hotel Huerto del Cura — or Priest’s Garden — offers the opportunity to stay in the Palmeral, in subtropical gardens, with a spa, a fab restaurant and co*cktails by the pool.
Details B&B doubles from £85 (hotelhuertodelcura.com). Fly to Alicante

6. Cedar and bougainvillea in Mallorca

Laid out in the 12th century by the nobleman Ben Abet, modified and expanded over the following centuries, Alfabia is arguably Spain’s most beautiful and harmonious garden. Sheltered by the mountains from the Tramuntana winds and watered by a permanent spring, this suntrap allows the alpine (cedar and fir) to live alongside the subtropical (bougainvillea and geranium) and is far more of an earthly paradise than, say, the Generalife in Granada. Yet it’s not without artifice: the 72-column pergola has 24 water jets that you can operate if you can find the button (£8; jardinesdealfabia.com). The Tren de Soller — the slow yet thrilling 17-mile journey through orange and almond groves along a narrow-gauge line between Palma and Soller — stops at the gardens (£24 return; trendesoller.com), or it’s a half-hour drive from Palma. Stay at the Finca Hotel Ca’s Sant, an 18th-century manor house turned 13-room boutique hotel with two pools in an orchard of 700 orange and lemon trees on the edge of Soller.
Details B&B doubles from £170 (cas-sant.com). Fly to Palma

7. Jasmine and orange trees in Seville

The late duch*ess of Alba — who, they said, could walk across Spain without setting foot outside her various estates — was a woman of exquisite taste and zero restraint, so it follows that the gardens of the Palacio de las Duenas — her place in Seville — should be an unashamedly over-the-top celebration of the Andalusian horticultural tradition. Patios, gardens and orchards occupy just under two fragrant acres here, with more than 7,000 specimens from 117 species, including jasmine, vines, bignonias, plumbagos, hibiscus and a froth of gitanillas, or geraniums (£10; lasduenas.es). Compare and contrast with the heavenly Mudejar gardens of the Real Alcazar — the Islamic idyll remodelled for Christian tastes in a European city that’s closer to Marrakesh than Rome. The Elvira Plaza is a traditional hotel overlooking the orange trees in the Plaza de Doña Elvira with views of the Giralda from the roof terrace.
Details B&B doubles from £117 (hotelelviraplaza.com). Fly or take the train to Seville

8. Symbolism and statuary in Galicia

The Pazo de Oca — a country estate half an hour southeast of the pilgrim city of Santiago de Compostela — is often referred to as “the Galician Versailles”. That’s a lazy description of an 18th-century garden so overplanted with symbolism that the experts still don’t know exactly what its creator, Andrés Gayoso, seigneur of Oca, is telling us. The allegory is centred on the two lakes, surrounded by 300-year-old box hedges and fed by the River Boo. One represents the virtues and the other, the vanities. Each contains a stone ship — one presumed to be a fishing boat, the other a warship. There’s a man with a snake, a labyrinth and more weathered stone monsters than a gothic roof. What does it all mean? Guessing is half the fun (£9; fundacionmedinaceli.org). The estate is a 15-minute walk south of Balboa (bus 817 from El Corte Ingles in Santiago, £2.50 return; bus.gal). Stay in the city: just up the street from the art museum at the Mosteiro de San Martiño Pinario, past a very good wine shop called Marida y Venceras (“marry and you will win”) stands the two-star Costa Vella. It is exactly the hotel you’re looking for here, with views of the cathedral and a gorgeous courtyard garden.
Details Room-only doubles from £77 (costavella.com). Fly to Santiago

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