Buenos Aires Botanical Gardens

Buenos Aires Botanical Gardens
Entrance to the gardens
Location	Buenos Aires, Argentina
Coordinates	34°34′57″S 58°25′07″W / 34.582470°S 58.418598°W / -34.582470; -58.418598
Area	6.9772 ha (0.026939 sq mi; 17.241 acres)

The Buenos Aires Botanical Garden (official name in Spanish: Jardín Botánico Carlos Thays de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires) is a botanical garden located in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires in Argentina. The garden is triangular in shape, and is bounded by Santa Fe Avenue, Las Heras Avenue and República Árabe Siria Street.

The garden, which was declared a national monument in 1996, has a total area of 6.9772 ha (0.026939 sq mi; 17.241 acres), and holds approximately 5,500 species of plants, trees and shrubs, as well as a number of sculptures, monuments and five greenhouses.

Designed by French architect and landscape designer Carlos Thays, the garden was inaugurated on September 7, 1898. Thays and his family lived in an English style mansion, located within the gardens, between 1892 and 1898, when he served as director of parks and walks in the city. The mansion, built in 1881, is currently the main building of the complex.

The park has three distinct landscape gardening styles; the symmetric, the mixed and the picturesque, recreated in the Roman, French and Oriental gardens.

There are also other plantae from the Americas, such as sequoias from United States and Chorisia speciosa (Palo Borracho), also called Floss silk tree from Brazil and Argentina. An abundant collection of flora from Argentina and the Southern Cone is present. In other sections plant species are systematically ordered by their taxonomic qualification.

Within the garden is the Municipal Gardening School Cristóbal María Hicken, which is linked to the Faculty of Agronomy of the University of Buenos Aires. The garden also contains 33 artistic works including sculptures, busts and monuments. Among these are Los primeros Fríos by the Catalan sculptor Blay y Fábregas, Sagunto by Querol y Subirats, Figura de mujer by Lola Mora, and Saturnalia made in bronze by Ernesto Biondi.