Jardín Botánico Carlos Thays

This guide to the Jardin Botanico Carlos Thays in Buenos Aires opens at the port in 1897, as an entire greenhouse arrives from Paris in crates for the French landscape architect Carlos Thays, who ran the city's parks department. It follows Thays through six years living on the grounds with his wife Cora, testing which foreign plants could take root in Argentine soil while also designing private gardens for more than forty wealthy cattle and wheat estancias. The garden opened to the public in September 1898, its formal French flowerbeds set beside pampas grass and imported conifers from three continents.