Gardens of the Senses

Spanish garden and landscape designer Javier Mariátegui presents his book “Gardens for the Senses,” a selection of his best works on Spanish gardens.

The UC Botanical Garden hosts Spanish landscape designer Javier Mariátegui for an illustrated talk about his approach to garden design and some of the gardens featured in his book, The Spanish Gardens of Javier Mariátegui: Gardens for the Senses.

Mariátegui considers each garden to be a work of art, and as such its language is led by intuition and sensations. He loves order and disorder, straight lines and curved, the wild chaos of nature as well as strict geometrical patterns, varied and single species of plants, color and absence of color. Water is an essential element of many of Javier’s designs, and he enjoys bringing all of the elements of a garden together until they harmonize.

About Javier Mariátegui

It was not by chance that Javier Mariátegui dedicated himself to gardening. His grandmother, the Marchioness of Casa Valdés, wrote the book Spanish Gardens, which continues to be a reference for all lovers of this particular field of history and art.

He studied landscape gardening and design at the Castillo de Batres School in Madrid, then worked in England as a gardener. For the last thirty years, he has been designing and building gardens across Spain as well as in several other European countries. He has published numerous articles on landscape gardening topics in specialized magazines, and his work has appeared in the most prestigious publications.

Reception and book signing at 5 pm following the presentation.