Carlos Thays, Buenos Aire's Biggest Tree-hugger

A nice reprise from the stress of the city: the Japanese Gardens

Gardening, for New Zealanders is mostly usually popular for those who are above 40 and still like a bit of a knees-up, whilst being bent down.  However anybody who has half a sense of smell, sight or touch can appreciate immediately upon arriving in BsAs that for some reason (which I will explain), the city has heaps of green spaces. For most of these we have to thank Carlos >>>
Nope, not that Carlos???






Uh uh, not him either (more on this one in another moment).

... Chaaarles Daaarling, nope not this Carlos either...


Ahh here he is...

Born Julian Charles Thays. He worked as a landscape artist on some of the Napoleonic parks in France and was consequently invited to design the big park in Cordoba, fell in love with Argentina, and when invited by the city of Buenos Aires to landscape the newly aquired Parque Lezama (more detail later),  got to work and loved what he did so much, gave himself the title of Director of Parks & Sideways for the city of Buenos Aires, a position he held for the next 35 years (and that noone since has held).

 A house with a garden that is not very well looked after is reason for shame, and for all the reasons Argentinian history shows (or omits) that has to feel ashamed, not among them are it's parks and plazas, of which there are hundreds.
Thays thought the river of silver a.k.a. el Rio de la Plata ugly, and turned his back on it focusing his artistic tree hugging eye inwards. For this reason the coastline of the river became ignored mostly and began to used as the city dumping grounds.

His modest "house" and grounds are now the city's botanical gardens, the house has an extensive library (not often open), and the grounds he broke up into plants and trees from every continent.
 For New Zealanders hiring someone just to take care of the garden is only for the very rich, however here where housemaids are still affordable and commonplace for the middle class most building complexes have the gardener/doorman/maintenance guy's wages are built into the expenses.
The parks here are hubs for the porteños, and greatly used. The city parks burgeon with dozens of dogs (8 of 10 households here have a pet and virtually noone has a backyard), and city park staff who are always present and mostly use weedeaters intead of ride-on mowers the cuttings afterwards are then blown about and ocassionally raked into piles, which are then collected or noisely blown about again ;)

More soon, and share your experience if you have a mo!