Lisbon Gardener Nuno Prates: Best Gardens in Lisbon & How He’s Greening the City

Lisbon is famous for its colorful streets, historic trams, and viewpoints overlooking the Tagus River. Yet beyond the tourist attractions lies another side of the city that few visitors discover: its botanical gardens, hidden parks, historic green spaces, and community gardens. While some date back more than 250 years, others are quietly being brought back to life by local residents.

One of the people leading that transformation is Nuno Prates, better known as The Lisbon Gardener. For more than three decades, he has explored, studied, and cultivated Lisbon’s gardens while promoting biodiversity and greener public spaces. Since 2024, he and local volunteers have restored 15 neglected public gardens using donated plants and no public funding, proving how community action can reshape the city one flower bed at a time.

In this exclusive interview with Locals Insider, Nuno shares his story, explains why Lisbon deserves greener streets, reveals his favorite hidden gardens, discusses tropical gardening in Portugal, and offers practical advice for anyone wanting to experience the city’s botanical side. Along the way, we’ve also compiled our guide to the 12 best gardens in Lisbon, complete with addresses and highlights to help you plan your visit.

His voice throughout is his own.

How I came to plants

Perhaps it was when, for the first time in my life, I used curiosity as a source of knowledge, realizing that plants held what truly interested me. As a child, I would occasionally pause the typical activities of childhood — playing, shouting, running, jumping — and become fascinated by subjects that seemed more suited to adults.

At that time, I looked with complete ignorance but immense enthusiasm at everything plants invited me to discover: leaves, shapes, petals, silhouettes, flowers, colors, fragrances, landscapes, forms, life, fantasies, and desires — all perfect stimuli for something I was born with: creativity.

“There has always been sap running through my veins alongside blood.”

Gardening is merely a practice through which creativity found another vehicle for expression. If simply intervening in the natural landscape is gardening, then I have been doing it from a very early age. The landscape has always been my main stage, as a small actor who always planned to plant in order to feel.

I became an adult and realized that there has always been sap running through my veins alongside blood.

Why tropical plants

The attraction lies in the exuberance, the density of ornamentation, and the vibrant colors. These may seem like rather ordinary explanations, but my preference for tropical vegetation stems from much more than that simplicity. It comes from the ability tropical plants have to create absolutely fantastic settings — where adventure is colorful, exciting, and incapable of becoming monotonous.

Stylistically, I might place tropical landscapes within a Baroque framework, Mediterranean landscapes within a Neoclassical one, and temperate landscapes within Romanticism. The meadows and scenery of southern Iberia, where I live, would be framed as Modernist. While I appreciate all of these styles greatly, I have a particular fondness for the patterns and ornamentation offered by tropical species.

Lisbon’s green spaces don’t match a European capital

I believe we are still far from best practices in urban green spaces by European standards. On one hand, there are no schools providing the updated knowledge required to raise the quality of our public gardens. On the other, there is a profound lack of interest within society regarding this subject — a weak appreciation of its importance, and a dangerous degree of environmental illiteracy among the public. People’s perception of Lisbon’s urban vegetation is very limited, partly due to the insufficient investment made by local authorities.

Private urban gardening practices are still largely inspired by oral tradition. This has terrible consequences for the way people perceive trees and shrubs planted in public spaces. Myths and popular beliefs are often disconnected from current knowledge and professional practice in urban environmental management, with significant consequences for the protection, promotion, and preservation of vegetation in Lisbon.

Those who govern the city have no strategic plan for its green spaces, and they know they risk losing popularity if they challenge the myths people hold about trees and shrubs — often seen as threats because of fears of falling branches or roots causing damage.

The city’s gardens are rarely ambitious and reflect an aesthetic vision that is deeply disconnected from the possibilities offered by the climate. For me to truly appreciate Lisbon’s gardens, the city would first need to demonstrate pride in its green spaces, and we are still far from that stage.

When it comes to botanical collections and rare specimens, it is private individuals who take pride in preserving them, while public and university gardens have limited scientific value. Fortunately, some historic spaces of immense significance have survived, where one can still admire period garden architecture — although often without much expectation regarding plant collections that have never been restored, renewed, or updated.

The cities that get urban greenery right

Between the 1990s and 2010, I visited numerous European cities on trips planned specifically to explore their urban green spaces. While Eastern European cities were emerging from a grey period shaped by a heavy Soviet legacy, today when I revisit cities such as Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Bratislava, Zagreb, and many others, I see very positive progress. There is dedication, appreciation, and above all a cultural expression regarding green spaces — something we still lack in Portugal.

France, England, Germany, the Benelux countries, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Austria have always set exemplary standards, strengthening and investing in urban greening as an alternative to the dominance of road traffic that once overshadowed humanistic and environmental ideals in major cities. Within Europe, Spain also deserves recognition for the path it has chosen, demonstrating an awareness I would like to see in my own country.

The United States is perhaps where urban gardening becomes an art form. I particularly admire Chicago’s Magnificent Mile and Michigan Avenue, which express the pinnacle of the meeting between horticultural technique, urban landscape design, and aesthetics in a single artistic statement. Many cities in Florida display the same quality, with street plantings maintained as carefully as the great gardens of Europe’s renowned palaces. What makes this remarkable is that these are public spaces integrated into the urban fabric.

I would say the United Arab Emirates shows a similar level of care and dedication. However, the most extraordinary gardens in the world are found in Japan. Singapore is another reference point, and modern Chinese cities have also become surprisingly impressive.

Any planting is welcome in Lisbon

There is a lot of talk right now about naturalistic design, native plants, and combating invasive species. I can only speak from a personal perspective, based on my experience gardening under extremely limited and challenging ecological conditions.

I am referring specifically to urban gardens, where one encounters some of the most adverse circumstances imaginable: vandalism, lack of irrigation, poor soils, contamination from dog urine, irresponsible public behavior, the general devaluation of plant life, a hostile climate, and widespread indifference. All these factors work against efforts to create successful urban green spaces.

These fundamental issues mean that any design approach can be beneficial for Lisbon, whether it relies on native species, xerophytic planting, Mediterranean styles, or Nordic inspiration. At this moment, anything planted is welcome, and design is merely a secondary concern that Lisbon is not yet in a position to be selective about.

This philosophy has guided my own initiatives to intervene in and restore public green spaces throughout the city.

What the Lisbon Gardener’s Academy actually is

The Lisbon Gardener’s Academy is structured around three connected spaces, each named according to its function and character.

It serves as a place of personal and collective fulfillment, through activities hosted within the Library of Botanical Affairs, the Office of Artistic Expressions dedicated to botany, gardens, and nature, and the Warehouse of Botanical Affairs.

In general, the Academy is a venue for meetings, study, discussion, and the dissemination of natural and cultural subjects. Its activities include scientific research and development, gardening workshops, practical and theoretical sessions, literary exploration, and various botanical ateliers held throughout the year.

The revival of a cultural and social environment is a priority, serving as a vehicle for learning and sharing knowledge among gardeners and anyone interested in these subjects.

I organize workshops for the urban gardener-poet, introducing concepts connected to the modern scholarly gardener and deepening the cultural dimensions of gardening as a form of landscape sculpture and floral poetry. I approach the garden as an artistic canvas and teach techniques for creating green spaces as works of art. My intention is to share my experience in urban gardening and contribute to a new interpretation of garden design for private gardens and small outdoor spaces.

Visiting the library

In the library, gardens can be read and understood more deeply. Its shelves bend under the weight of manuals containing the knowledge still largely unknown to the public about urban and wild landscapes, both in Portugal and around the world.

Visits are by appointment only, Monday to Saturday, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., on dates announced through my Instagram account.

The library is also part of my guided tours of Lisbon’s gardens, which are announced through the same channel and take place between spring and autumn.

Fifteen public gardens replanted, all by donation

Since 1993, I have been carrying out interventions in public spaces with the aim of planting throughout the city. In 2024, I decided to publicly share one such initiative on Instagram: rescuing a neglected planting bed that was dry, abandoned, and unable to support plant life because of contamination from dog waste, and restoring it to its original purpose as a green space.

“We have replanted fifteen gardens across Lisbon, entirely through donations and without any support from the municipality. We are perceived as highlighting the inefficiency of local authorities and, for that reason, are institutionally ignored. Nevertheless, we continue — and we fund the work ourselves.”

I asked for plant donations and invited anyone interested to join me on a specified day and time. The response was extraordinary. Many people donated plants, while others came to help with the planting itself. Local residents quickly understood what was happening and began bringing plants from their own homes to improve the site.

An emotional bond was created around each plant introduced into the public space, with every donor taking pride in contributing. Not a single plant was stolen or vandalized. The idea of neighborhood gardens had taken root, and I soon began receiving constant requests to organize more initiatives throughout the city.

We never stopped. So far, we have replanted fifteen gardens across Lisbon, entirely through donations and without any support from the municipality, the state, or any institution. We are often perceived as highlighting the inefficiency of local authorities and, for that reason, are institutionally ignored. It is an unfortunate mindset, showing how the egos of those in power can overshadow acts of citizenship that genuinely benefit the community. Nevertheless, we continue — and we fund the work ourselves.

My favorite gardens in Lisbon

The finest examples are found in private gardens created by people who truly love plants and cultivate them in their own spaces. These gardens become living laboratories for experimentation and acclimatization, allowing species from around the world to adapt to Lisbon’s climate and coastline. I know remarkable and surprising specimens growing at such a northerly latitude, and all of them can be found in private gardens.

“I collect gardens rather than cars — and I am very happy about that.”

One of the hidden gems is my own collection of private gardens, because I collect gardens rather than cars — and I am very happy about that.

The most impressive tropical garden, where species unique in Portugal can be admired, is the Jardim das Plantas Doadas (the Garden of Donated Plants) in the Alvalade neighborhood — a public garden that I planted for the community and for the city of Lisbon.

Perhaps the most mysterious and tropical garden in Lisbon is my own, a source of great pride and satisfaction. It is located in the Chiado district in downtown Lisbon.

The Lisbon I know

I was born in Lisbon almost six decades ago and have lived here all my life. Because of my passion for tropical and subtropical plants, I am constantly fascinated by the possibilities offered by the city’s unique climate.

I feel that the social and cultural exoticism which has characterized the Portuguese capital since the fifteenth century is reflected in its architecture, its people, its culture, its gastronomy, its language — and naturally in its urban vegetation. That is how I experience the city. Although it has become excessively tourist-oriented, and increasingly uncontrolled in terms of urban planning choices that dramatically alter its character, its identity is still present.

Lisbon remains unique within Europe, particularly for a European capital, even though serious challenges are gradually diluting its distinctive personality.

I am someone who socializes more easily with nature than with people. I can speak endlessly about plants, gardens, landscapes, and vegetation, but I am not the best person to recommend social venues or forms of entertainment.

The best advice I can offer is simply to walk through the city and observe the relaxed way people live here — deeply rooted in rural traditions while existing within a cosmopolitan environment. It is a unique modern blend, shaped by a distinctly Portuguese attitude.

Nuno is the Lisbon Gardener. He runs the Lisbon Gardener’s Academy, has replanted fifteen public gardens in Lisbon through the Jardim das Plantas Doadas project, and shares his work at @the_lisboan_gardener. Library visits and guided tours of Lisbon’s gardens can be booked through his Instagram account.

Featured photo: soniabonet