Tuesday, April 05, 2016

Not Much Change at the Boticario

I read somewhere the other day that the Medio Ambiente people had recently done some work on the fabulous Parque El Boticario near the Almería airport.  I visit it quite often and enjoy walking around the 14 hectares of Almerian botanical life. Well, there's now one resident duck, so I could probably say 'Almerian natural life'. The duck is a newcomer, as the dried-out pond grandly labelled as 'Almerian Wetlands' by a rotting sign, has gamely filled with water and, item, one duck.
There was some small evidence of a visit from the environmentalist gardeners. I may have seen a hose. Perhaps a brief visit, as there still is much to be done. There are for example no flowers or small plants (Almeriapedia claims 75,000) and not much in the way of shrubs either (there should be 2,000). The gardens of El Boticario were presented to the public in 2005, but, since neither the town hall of Almería nor the Diputación wanted the privilege of watering and maintaining them, the parque stayed under the control of an unwilling Consejería de Medio Ambiente, based in Seville. So, the gardeners went, the silly seniors exercise machines rotted and those plants susceptible to disease or thirst duly keeled over dead.
It's a beautiful park, with few people to wander through it. It's also a perfect example of how our ecologists are interested only in funding and not, unfortunately, in la naturaleza.


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