Restoring Raixa gardens will cost 3.6m euros

IT will cost 3.6 million euros to restore the gardens of the Raixa estate in Bunyola to their former glory.
Raixa is the estate purchased by the central ministry of the environment and it will be managed by the Council of Majorca and the National Parks Foundation. But work on the gardens will not start until the refurbishment of the buildings is completed.
Juan Armada Díez de Rivera, vice-rector of gardening at the Royal Botanical Garden, and Santiago Castroviejo, former director of the Garden, visited Raixa recently to study the gardens, prior to preparing a plan for restoring them. The gardens, once a major tourist attraction, have been classified as cultural interest.
Armada and Castroviejo made a full report on the gardens which combine a market garden, fruit trees and beautifully laid out gardens.
But they have been neglected for a long time, even though efforts to clean them up have been made recently.
The report says that it will be possible to rebuild a large part of the gardens, which have an Italian influence, enriched by techniques used by the Arabs which have been preserved in Majorca. But if the gardens will cost 3.6 million euros, the buildings themselves will cost 14.5 million euros, and work is due to be completed within 30 months. The main building will account for 9.9 million euros.