Marimurta - Blanes

Blanes is a small town on the Spanish Costa Brava coast which is the home of the Marimurta botanical garden, created by Carles Faust. The garden covers 4 hectares and is situated on a cliff top overlooking the town, and affording magnificent views of the coastline. Over 3,000 species of plants suitable for a Mediterranean style garden form the botanical collection, which is arranged in zones Sub-Tropical, Temperate and Mediterranean. We first visited Marimurta in 1992, the year that Spain hosted the Olympic Games in the nearby Catalan city of Barcelona. That first visit impressed and inspired us, though in comparison with that initial visit on this occasion the garden was not quite as impressive. The effects of four years of drought and the ongoing reorganisation of some of the planting schemes have obviously had a negative impact on the garden. None the less the garden is still worth a visit. Visitors to the Spanish Catalan region, which has been popular as a mass tourism destination for 50 years, must be surprised and disappointed that the web site of such an important site is still under construction with limited information and is written only in the Catalan language. They could do better. A map showing a recommended route for he visitor was available at the gate, with a brief paragraph in German, Italian and French. Admission times are 09:00 – 20:00 during June, July, August and September; 09:00 – 18:00 during April, May and October, and 10:00 – 17:00 for the remainder of the year. Entrance fee €5.50.