Botanicactus

When Oswald Macario decided to expand his cactus collection into a public garden in 1989, he picked one of Mallorca’s driest corners, precisely because of the scarcity of rain. The solution: dig a 10,000-square-meter artificial lake, the largest in the Balearic Islands, then repurpose every shovelful of excavated soil into protective hills that shield delicate tropical plants from northern winds. The result: 150,000 square meters where 300-year-old Arizona saguaros thrive alongside bamboo groves and water palms, all sustained by clever engineering rather than Mediterranean mercy.

The garden’s real inventory is less about a round headline number and more about density: some 15,000 individual specimens spanning roughly 1,600 species, packed into distinct zones rather than scattered at random. A 40,000-square-meter desert section alone holds around 400 cactus varieties, while a separate Mediterranean stretch keeps native olive trees, pines, and citrus in their own corner, as if even the garden’s design insists that Mallorca’s own plants deserve equal billing next to the imported spectacle.