Before and after cactus garden photos Tenerife Puerto de la Cruz.
The cactus garden on Playa Jardin had been delighting many a holiday home in Tenerife owner for at least 40 years. See the photo of it depicted below. This is how the manicured small cactus park was before disaster struck. Many holiday home in Tenerife owners took its landscaping design as inspiration for their villa front or back gardens. What they often didn't realize is that the prickly round and tall plants by the old fortress Castillo San Felipe had their roots in beach sand. That gave them automatic drainage, while waters from the gorge flooded it, sometimes, but never too much. A bit of artificial irrigation helped as well, as even those semi desert plants need ground moisture. 
Indeed, the beach cactus garden of Puerto de la Cruz had been constructed on ever so slightly sloping terrain.
It seemed to be one of excellent landscape design ideas for cactus art by a well looked after beach. You could admire the lovely, small cactus garden from as far as the traffic bridge nearby. From there nothing obscured the views of this small Arizona type plant patch. People could also reach it from different corners to admire its cactus arrangement from close up. Something, which looked like a white cross, may have been paving and served as central focal point by its star-like symmetry. Cactea of different shapes and sizes were arranged to round off the almost formal landscaping style. Cactea destroyed by floods:Then it rained rather heavily during the day of October 17th of 2009. This continued well through the night. The gorge called barranco in Spanish became a rising river of mountain water with stones, rocks and all sorts of debris. When I went home from the dentist after lunch the day after and looked at it from the height of the bus it had started raining again. I could not believe my eyes. I was awe struck. Withing 1,5 hours at the doctor, this barranco had menacing waterfalls again. However then, the rain was not strong at all. I would not have gone off the bus, though, as I feared worse. So nobody may tell me that what came down this gorge a few hours ago were not floods... By the way, I also noticed that the bridge was almost blocked by rubble underneath with only about a 2foot gap left. I was wondering how the water was supposed to reach the ocean, soon after. This location is only a few meters away from the cactus garden, which merely protected the cactea from then on, perhaps. 
Encounter pictures which are proof of ravaging volcanic rocks and see what they did to cars, which had been parked further up the gorge. They seemed to have had fun with the vehicles. They had no respect for the cactus garden either. They shaved most of it clean off. Enlarge the flood damage photo to see the poor left overs of a once stylish cactus garden from close up... So much to landscaping before and after floods... Or pardon me and call them tropical rains, which were rather a natural incidence... The fact that the barranco had not turned into a dangerous, mauroding water snake for 40 years was sheer luck.
A natural gorge for environment preservation:We must congratulate the late landscaper César Manrique and helping town engineers for leaving the gorge as part of important natural environment, when they redesigned the beaches of Playa Jardin. Heavy rains would have run havoc, had there not been a gorge which welcomed them by Tenerife high lands. Mind Tenerife Mount Teide is Spain's highest peak with 3714 meters.Landscape design at the merci of weather:I hear many tourists moan that nobody has put the tiny cactus garden back into place and that beach Play Jardin looks so sad now. They say: 'Look at the beach debris of this black beach!' Indeed, the real ugly beach by the cactus garden is just a few steps further on. Can you blame nature for making such a messy beach? Cactus garden of Tenerife and global warming:No cactea were planted again in the same area of Playa Jardin by February 2010. Copy legally...Be welcome to use any photo of this page cactus garden for no commercial use...Right click text in HTML window below... Select, copy and paste into your blog or web. Doing this no copy right offense will be taken.
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