Palmetum of Santa Cruz de Tenerife

The Palmetum of Santa Cruz de Tenerife is a botanical garden of 120,000 m specialized in palms (Arecaceae). It is an artificial hill, with views of the ocean, located in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. The gardens include a large system of waterfalls, streams and ponds, a museum dedicated to palms, and a display shade house. The project was started in 1995 on a former landfill and only opened to the public in 2014. The valuable palm collection gathers about 600 species of palms and it is focused on the ones native to world islands. Trees and shrubs of other plant families are also displayed, organised in "biogeographical sections". All gardens are maintained with no pesticides and no fertilizers, different species of wild birds are frequently seen in the palmetum.
The palmetum is located in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, capital city of the Western Canary Islands, in the district of Cabo Llanos, by the Parque Marítimo César Manrique. It is an artificial hill originally made of rubbish: a former landfill of the city, by the ocean. The average annual temperature is 21,7 °C and the absolute minimum temperature recorded is 13 °C.
The old landfill was shut in 1983. The creation of the gardens was started in 1995 with funding from the European Union and the City of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, under the botanical direction of the Agronomist Manuel Caballero Ruano and the biologist Carlo Morici. The landscape designer Carlos Simón directed the construction of various lakes and waterfalls and the plantation of the earliest gardens from 1996 to 1999. The development was paralysed in 2000 for lack of funding. Since then it was kept with basic maintenance until 2006. During 2007 and 2008 some major works were performed in order to push it further. The whole watering system was replaced and the unfinished southern slopes were landscaped. Living collections have been improved and ordered and new geographical sections have been started. More works followed in 2010-2011, with the construction of the entrance building and the hardscaping of roads and circles. While the park was still closed, the first public guided tours were offered throughout 2013, and it was eventually inaugurated in 2014 by the princes of Spain. It became an official botanical garden in 2015. Today it is open daily and visited by locals and tourists, with thriving school programs and regular exchanges with other institutions.
As of 2016, the plant collection includes at least 1853 plant taxa, with focus on island floras. 420 plant taxa are in the IUCN red list: 73 are critically endangered and 2 extinct in the wild.
The palm collection has 573 taxa. 163 are represented by at least one adult. 192 taxa are in the IUCN red list and 38 of them are critically endangered; 42 "IUCN palms" reached the adult stage.
Other well-represented families are Amaryllidaceae, Asparagaceae, Apocynaceae, Bromeliaceae, Fabaceae, Malvaceae and Moraceae.
The collection focuses on palms from islands and the Caribbean species are the most represented. The collection of Thrinax, Coccothrinax and Hemithrinax is one of the most complete in the world, as it proceeds from numerous field expeditions and collaborations with botanical gardens in the Caribbean, especially with La Habana, Cienfuegos and Las Tunas in Cuba, the Montgomery Botanical Center in Miami and the Jardín Botánico Nacional de Santo Domingo.
Some taxa are grown in sufficient number to allow ex situ seed production of IUCN species. An outstanding case is Coccothrinax borhidiana, which is a slow and critically endangered species, represented in the palmetum by 17 specimens germinated in 1996, now fruiting in the Caribbean section.
The surface of the hill is divided in "biogeographical sections", in order to host the palm flora from different areas of the world. They are variable in size between 1.000 and 20.000 m. Some sections are landscaped with hills, streams, ponds or waterfalls. Sections are listed below with some of the most significant species represented.
28°27′07″N 16°15′21″W﻿ / ﻿28.45194°N 16.25583°W﻿ / 28.45194; -16.25583