Seville Gardens and Natural Parks

The City of orange blossoms, Seville has a lot of greenery to soothe the eye. Apart from the enticing orange trees, there are many gardens throughout the city which are havens of beauty and tranquility. Beautifully designed and excellently maintained, the gardens are a delight to visitors and locals alike.  The magnificent gardens of  the Alcazar are Arabic in design featuring rivulets, fountains and mosaics.  And most of the other gardens in the city were created for the Expo 92 and have been very well maintained since then.

Apart from the gardens, the famous national park of Sierra Norte is also in the region of Seville and is a great natural heritage.  

Duchess of Montpensier Maria Luisa Fernanda, gave away part of the San Telmo Palace Gardens to Seville in 1893. It got a makeover in 1929, when the entire southern end of the city was transferred into an expanse of gardens and grand boulevards for the American- Spanish Exposition. As a result the Park was transformed into an exquisite stretch of swaying palms and orange trees, elms and Mediterranean pines, covered with flower beds and dotted with hidden bowers, ponds and pavilions. It was created to promote the city of Seville, along with its romanticism and to highlight its importance Andalusia. It is one of the  most beautiful gardens  in Europe today.

The main features of the Maria Luisa Park are el Monte Gurugu, the picturesque garden of Lecolant which takes its name from the mass that dominates the city of Melilla; la Fuente de los Leones (Fountain of Lions) which has markings from the Renaissance and Arab-Andaluz periods, la Isleta de los Patos, (the Islet of the ducks) a pond surrounded by rustic stones with a central island and an exotic pavilion and finally the Estanque de los Lotos (Pond of the Lotuses).

The park is designed like the Plaza de Espana in a mix of 1920's Art Deco and mock Mudejar by the architect, Anibal Gonzalez. Scattered about and round the edge are more buildings from the 1929 fair, a good example is the stylish Guatemala building, off the Paseo de la Palmera.
Towards the end of the park, the grandest mansions from the fair have been adapted as museums. The farthest contains the city's archaeology collections. The main exhibits are Roman mosaics and artefacts from nearby Italica, along with a unique Phoenician statuette of Astarte-Tanit, the Virgin goddess once worshipped throughout the Mediterranean.

The Murillo gardens were created in honour of the celebrated artist.  These gardens are spread adjoining the palace walls and are a part of Seville’s social and cultural legacy. They are also an important contributing factor to the environmental beauty and health of the city. since she is one of the landscaped zones of greater historical interest, artistic, landscaping and environmental Garden of Seville.
The Gardens of Murillo are an inseparable part of the life of the city; wherein important and conserve interesting botanical species, as well as architectonic, escultoricas samples and of original elements of urban furniture of the moment of their formation and design by the well-known architect Don Juan Talavera and Heredia. Tambien are to emphasize the monument to Columbus located just in the center of jardines.
Their public squares honors dedicated to the painter Jose Garcia’s Branches, in which tiles that recreate works of this artist and executed by other painters of the moment exist, like Miguel of the Pine, Santiago Martinez, Alfonso Grosso, Manuel Vigil and Diego Lopez.

• Donana National Park

The National Park's biodiversity is the result of the conjunction of different ecosystems. The Park is noted for its extreme flatness. There, you can see a transition from the undulating topography of the 'cotos' to the marshes, which are the most noteworthy seeing as they provide a refuge for many migratory birds. The vegetation is also determined by the different ecosystems (dunes, sandy ground, fresh water and lakes...).
With respect to the fauna, Donana is home to a large number of species which, apart from the outstanding presence of the birds, includes the Iberian lynx which has become an emblem of the Park, since it is a carnivore endemic to the Iberian Peninsula.

• Sierra Norte Nature Reserve

This nature reserve is situated to the north of the province of Seville. Its relief is gentle and meadows abound. The Sierra Norte is noteworthy for the presence of predators, as well as species of special interest, both in the vertebrate and invertebrate fauna. Among other species, the lynx, black vulture, imperial eagle and black stork stand out. On the other hand, the protected nature area is notable for the extraction of cork, the use of holm oak groves by cattle breeders, as well as the agricultural activity.