Jardí Botànic de Barcelona
In order to optimise the use of the corten plates,
these were welded perpendicular to the slope of
the top of the wall. As with paths, the final height
of the walls was also decided on site by the site
architect with the help of the surveyor.
Planting scheme
The five parts of the world with a Mediterranean
climate – the Mediterranean Basin, west California,
central Chile, the tip of South Africa and part of
southern Australia – although so widely separated
from one another, nevertheless present extraor-
dinary climatic affinities, which are reflected in
the appearance and structure of their plants, their
systems of land use and also the general appea-
rance of their landscapes. Plants in these various
Mediterranean regions have had to adapt to survive
the dry summer, occasional frosts in winter and, in
many cases, the regular presence of fire. Though
genetically different, these plants went through
similar processes of adaptation to climate, which
in turn resulted in their similarity. This is known
as the evolutionary convergence of plants. In the
JBB collection, Canary Islands sub-tropical vege-
tation has an important relation to the rest of the
Mediterranean climate flora, since it represents the
originalThermophilous vegetation from which all
the others evolved at the time when Pangea sepa-
rated 250 million years ago.
JBB introduces an innovative approach to botanical
gardens: instead of presenting its plant collection by
taxonomical order, it groups it by ecological affinity
and morphologic evolutionary convergence into phy-
toepisodes. These are not literal botanical commu-
nities or ecosystems found in nature, but an extra-
polation of the most characteristic species present
in natural landscape. For example, there is a single
phytoepisode to represent the Holm Oak forest, the
most common forest in the entire Mediterranean
basin. Called ‘Evergreen Oak Woodland’, this phyto-
episode presents most of the representative species
present in all the different Holm Oak forest communi-
ties in the Occidental Mediterranean. Therefore, the
concept is to render the worldwide Mediterranean
vegetal landscapes in order to investigate their adap-
tation strategies, plants associations, phytosocio-
logy, conservation of endangered species, survival in
Barcelona’s conditions, etc.This innovative concept has important advantages
in terms of conservation and scientific investigation,
since the botanical garden will have ‘full popula-
tions’ of each species instead of individual speci-
mens, and therefore much higher genetic variability.
It also has practical advantages, since these natu-
rally associated populations have the same growing
conditions and tend to find ecological balance bet-
ween themselves, minimising establishment and
maintenance works.7.24
Echium: Canary Islands thermophilous woodlands
7.25
Rotación derocalla: Saxicolous communities of
Spanish Levante