Garden Visit : The Royal Botanic Garden, Madrid

To get away from this dreary nasty German winter weather, let's take a trip back to a garden that I visited last June:  the Real Jardin Botanico de Madrid. 

It is a beautifully maintained scientific garden in the middle of the city next to the Prado and the much larger Retiro Park. 

A very good selection of huge trees and shaded areas give respite from the Spanish midday heat.

 Sometimes the labelling could be a improved. Who might you be?

day-lilies

 my old favourite: Romneya coulteri in flower

 Kniphofia "Amsterdam" , a very good colour, that does not grow in Germany.

a heavily scented Jasmine wall

  on Ceratostigma  flowers

Curious parakeet couples in a huge communal nest at the entrance to the Botanic garden.

Spring break in Madrid

A very quick midweek-trip to spring in Madrid and back: we spent three days at the Art Fair ARCO Madrid to look for inspiration and collect ideas for a few empty walls back home with the added bonus of catching some warm breeze.

Plaza Mayor

Iberico Ham and Tapas

In Parque del Buen Retiro  or "El Retiro" in the centre of the city  people were enjoying the first sun.

The Crystal Palace

Thuja topiary

no dogs, please!

 Prado

 Hieronymus Bosch's ("El Bosco") "Garden of Earthly Delights" from the early 1500s, which looks like a prophetic science fiction work. 

Schattenspiele

Museum Sorolla in Sorolla's Andalusian style villa in the old banking quarter of Madrid : 

Evening at the Royal Palace. We met old acquaintances - cranes with their characteristic talking noise flew over in thousands in  V-formation on their way back north to Scandinavia. Will we see them over Berlin next week?