10/29: Costa Brava's Captivating Cap Roig Gardens

Leaving Girona in our rental car we’d have for the next couple of weeks, we drove to Palafrugell in Costa Brava to stop at the Gardens of Cap Roig located within sight of the beautiful Mediterranean. We wanted to stop after reading the gardens covered 17 hectares and included 1,000 botanical species from all over the world as well as sculptures by renowned Spanish and international artists. 

The remarkable spot dated back to 1927 when a Russian colonel, Nicolai Voevodsky, a fan of drawing and architecture, and Dorothy Webster, an interior designer and archaeology and gardening enthusiast, decided to set up on the Costa Brava a place where they could live and build their dream. According to their wishes, the couple was buried in one of the Gardens’ most beautiful spots. The castle and the gardens were their legacy.

The Village, designed to resemble a small square and village in the Mediterranean style, was the entrance to the gardens. This was where the workers and their families used to live who built the castle and the gardens. The trees were cork oaks, a variety we hadn’t seen before.

Along the Castle Path we saw some magnificent bougainvillea and thought how lucky we were that it was still blooming in late October and even how much lovelier it would be in the summertime sun. 

As we looked toward the Mediterranean, we had a splendid view of the tiny Formigues Islands.

One of the many sculptures in the gardens:

I wish we'd had someone with us who knew the names of the plants and flowers we were seeing. We had a park guide which listed the names of the plants in the various regions of the gardens but there were no signs I noticed beside the plants themselves. 

I loved these feathery, purplish flowers but doubt they'd grow in Denver's much cooler climate. 

We were delighted to spot a couple of orange trees. Little did we know they were a precursor of the thousands of orange trees we soon would be seeing on city streets all over Spain for the next six weeks. 

How stunning the bougainvillea lining the path must look when they're blooming  in the summertime.

The Variacones sculpture: 

On Festival Avenue was a series of sculptures. One I liked because it was so different was this one, simply called PIC-NIC.

The castle on the grounds of the gardens was undergoing renovations so we couldn’t enter it unfortunately. The medieval looking building was reddish in color because of the oxide produced by the iron rich stone and was built using materials on the estate. 

We both loved the appropriately named Lovers’ Garden with its romantic stone arches and stone pines towering over bushes pruned into small trees. 

In the distance was a delightful view of the seaside towns of Calella and Llfranc. 

The Cap Roig Gardens had one of the largest Cactus Gardens we’d ever seen. We thought it even beat the Saguaro National Park outside of Tucson, Arizona in terms of beauty of location  and plant selection.

The Cactus Garden was on many levels as it looped around the hilly gardens. Luckily, that meant we had more gorgeous views of the sea.

Never had we seen any cutouts or ‘windows’ in a botanical garden and I loved that feature about Cap Roig. 

One of the plants I loved seeing at Cap Roig was this one that looked so absolutely perfect to be almost unnatural. 

This prickly variety of cactus was aloe.

The saguaro had small tomato-looking flowers on them that almost looked plasticky, they were so perfect. 

Some steps led us to a lookout point with another striking view of the Mediterranean.

More of the same plants I'd admired so much earlier. I had to double check to make sure they weren't plastic as they seemed so perfect!

From here we could hear the waves crashing on the waves below. Steven had been pretty skeptical at my suggestion we stop at Cap Roig Gardens figuring there wouldn’t be much to see at that time of the year. I think even he was won over by how many plants were still flowering.

The Lady’s Mirador lookout was a window frame with a view of Calella de Palafrugell that was named because Lady Voevdsky was particularly fond of. No wonder she was fond of it as it was just idyllic, even in the light rain in late October.

Tea Square was an idyllic spot where the Voevdskys would drink their tea while looking out to sea through the Calella viewpoint and the Santa Sebastia lighthouse. 

I couldn't help but smile at Ana Mercedes Hoyos' colorful sculpture called Platon.

The hydrangeas looked beautiful in late October. I never knew before going to Cap Roig that the plant's Latin name was hortensia, also an uncommon girl's name. 

The open-air auditorium hosts one of the summer’s most prestigious music festivals, the Cap Roig Festival which attracts great names of international repute.

The entire time we were in the lovely gardens we only saw eight other people there, no doubt because it was so chilly and damp. I guess if we had a choice to come in warmer weather when all the gardens would be at their peak, we would have, too, but the Cap Roig Gardens was an ideal spot to take another break for a couple of hours to enjoy another part of the Costa Brava.

Just ten minutes down the road was the small town of Llfranc. What a mob scene the charming coastal community must be at the height of the summer when it throngs with British and European tourists after being listed as one of the best unsung resorts in Europe. 

However, in late October Llfranc was not the place to be as it looked like the entire town was closed up until the warm weather would return next spring!

This looked like Llfranc's answer to twisty Lombardy Street in San Francisco!

Set on a protected bay, the horseshoe-shaped village of Tamariu was just a few minutes' further along the coast. There was a pedestrian promenade with shops and restaurants next to the beach but they, too, were closed.

We had hoped to also spend a short time next at Begur Castle located high in the hills overlooking the tiny coastal towns. However, we were only able to see it from a distance after driving through almost impossibly narrow lanes in Begur which made for some anxiety on the part of Steven who was driving, and myself as the navigator!

We headed instead to our final destination of Roses which would be our headquarters for the next couple of days as we explored more of Spain's Costa Brava region.

The late afternoon sun looked beautiful on the town of Albons.

Next post: Discovering Salvador Dali's genius.

Posted on December 6th, 2018, from Lisbon, Portugal.