Meet Luis Medina-Montoya Hellgren

Meet Luis Medina-Montoya Hellgren,

Director of the Jardín Botánico-Histórico La Concepción in Malaga

By Fiona Scott Lazareff

Luis Medina-Montoya Hellgren is the general director of the environmental department of the city of Malaga and one of his favorite roles is being also the director of La Concepción, a wonderful historical-botanical garden no more than 15 minutes from the city centre.

Medina’s office is a high-ceilinged room overlooking a semi-tropical forest of trees and shrubs, in the neo-classical mansion around which the gardens were built from 1855 onwards by the  marquis and marchioness of Casa Loring.

Medina explains: “The marquis, Jorge Loring, was the son of an American merchant, George Loring James from Boston, who had built a fortune in commerce between Malaga and the USA. His wife, Amelia Heredia Livermore, was the daughter of a self-made business man from the north of Spain, Manuel Agustin Heredia, and granddaughter of another wealthy merchant of Irish origin, Thomas Livermore. On their six month honeymoon they visited numerous palaces and gardens and on their return, Amelia decided to build a garden. They bought several properties, amounting to about 50 hectares, built a summer residence and found a French gardener, Chamousset, to landscape, in a British landscaping style, the five hectares of land immediately surrounding the house."

Thanks to their money and travels they set about creating an exquisite open-air collection of tropical and subtropical flora. Plant species from Europe, America, Asia, Africa and Oceania are all on show here. Whilst the gardens were renowned for their exquisite beauty, they were equally famous for a magnificent collection of archaeological remains, which are on display in a small, Doric-style building, in the garden. It was built on a Roman mosaic discovered in Cártama depicting the feats of Hercules. The mosaic was removed some years ago and The Lex Flavia Malacitana, a bronze piece bearing the Roman laws that governed Malaga in the year 80 AD, is now in the National Archaeology Museum, but the rest of the collection remains in place.

Following the death of its owners and the family’s economic decline, La Concepción was bought in 1911 by a married couple from Bilbao, the Echevarria-Echevarrieta. They lived in Madrid, but this was their summer property. They extended the gardens by creating a number of new areas. The couple died without children and their nephew kept it a while before selling it to the city of Malaga for €3.6 million.

“Since La Concepción was bought by the Council in 1990, there have been two main goals: first to preserve the cultural, historical and botanical heritage that is inexorably linked to the history of both the city of Malaga and the rest of Spain, and second to increase the number of visitors,” explains Medina.

For the latter purpose, Medina’s predecessors created initiatives such as joining the association of botanical gardens of Portugal and Spain, the area, "Around the world in 80 trees", with the concept ‘Plant a tree’: in return for  €150, the donor gets a tree with the name of their child on a plaque. There is also an area which includes every type of Palm tree in the world, the “Mapa-mundi of palm trees” as well as an association of friends which was created by a growing group of local enthusiasts shortly after the garden was opened to the public in 1994, following extensive works of restoration. Apart from sales from ticket revenues, the gardens are a popular venue for all types of events, especially wedding ceremonies as well as receptions.

However with its huge maintenance costs, the gardens still require a subsidy from the city of close on €1.5 million a year.

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Luis Medina-Montoya Hellgren was the managing Director of the Jardín Botánico-Histórico La Concepción in Malaga from 2013 to 2016.