GRANADA, Spain – When Moorish builders constructed the ancient royal kingdom called the Alhambra, they had a lofty goal: We must put the king and his court as close to paradise as possible.

And, if we’re lucky, we’ll get to hang out there with him.

From a landscaper’s perspective, that meant lots of intricate water features to sustain both the garden and the court, exquisite tiling underfoot to stimulate and amuse the minds of the kingdom’s leaders, shady refuges from the sweltering heat, fragrant plants to distract from weighty matters of home and state, and fruits and vegetables to feed the small royal city on a hill.

I had the opportunity to tour the Alhambra in October, during a three-week trip with my mom and my aunt. We spent one week on a horse trek in the mountains near Granada. The next two weeks, we visited Granada, Madrid and Barcelona, in the company of my cousin Garrett, who is studying Spanish language and culture in Madrid. I must report that Spain is fabulous – wonderful people (warm and welcoming), original and challenging architecture (Gaudi), exquisite art (Velazquez, Goya and Picasso, to name a few) and incredible food (little tapas plates and bars that serve hot chocolate all day, as well as an entire industry built around artisan smoked ham).

As for gardens, I saw the gamut. There were the manicured public gardens with lots of topiaries in a big city park in Madrid. Then there were the “architectural” landscapes of the Spanish architect Gaudi, who decorated Barcelona with fanciful buildings, and a forward-thinking community park where families could live side by side and enjoy common spaces. A forest there might consist of tall man-made pillars that also serve to hold up a community patio overhead. Villagers in the Sierra Nevadas mountain of Andalusia maintained practical kitchen gardens, but also decorated their hillside homes of white stucco with terra cotta pots of hot pink geraniums.

The Alhambra, which might be familiar to you from Washington Irving’s “Tales of the Alhambra,” represents a blend of Christian and Moorish influences. Arab builders started constructing the Alhambra as a fortress for Nasrid kings in the ninth century, and gradually added palaces, towers, gates, walls and civic buildings. The Nasrids were members of the last of the Muslim dynasties in Spain, ruling from 1238 to 1492. Later, Charles V ordered a palace of his own plunked down next to the Moorish Nasrid palaces, a big Renaissance-influenced building with Doric columns, royal shields and Italian sculptures.

The most extensively preserved gardens of the Alhambra are called the Generalife, which means “the garden of lofty paradise.” After its construction in the 14th century, Nasrid kings could forget their daily responsibilities high above the city, and literally be “closer to the heavens” in lush pastures, orchards and garden beds. The Alhambra saw three centuries worth of construction – please ex-cuse my earlier laments about the seven-month-long road project passing by our house – and when the Generalife was added, it was a chance to show off the excellent technical skill with which Moorish planners borrowed water from the nearby Darro River and channeled it through the Generalife to the Alhambra. We saw evidence of this water wizardry throughout the Andalusian region. During our horse ride in the Sierra Nevada mountains, my gelding drank fresh water from a stone channel built more than 1,000 years ago.

As in typical Moorish landscape fashion, the Generalife includes pools and fountains for eye and ear pleasure and to cool down a courtyard on a sweltering summer day. The garden is broken up into “rooms,” which you enter, one after another, through Moorish arches. The plant palette features perennials, shrubs and herbs, as well as lots of brightly colored annuals. Fragrant water lilies float in the ponds and Italian cypresses line walkways to provide shade. In the Nasrid day, the Generalife was considered a primary food source, with nut and fruit orchards (the city symbol is the pomegranate) and vegetable gardens for the royal cooks.

The Alhambra’s gardeners did not restrict themselves to the Generalife. Each of the palaces in the compound also had at least one courtyard filled with fragrant plants, shrubs and trees.

The Moorish garden was intended to appeal to all of the senses, according to the “Treatise on Agriculture and Gardening,” by Ibn Luyun, a source quoted in my guide to the Alhambra. “The garden should be longer than it is wide, so as not to tire the eyes in contemplation,” he wrote. “Plant clumps of evergreens close to the channel to delight the eye, and a little farther away, as wide a variety of flowers and evergreen trees as possible.”

The garden should be surrounded by a vineyard, and the garden pathways shaded by climbing vines. At the center of a good Moorish garden, an open pavilion provides a place for “hours of rest,” surrounded by roses, myrtles and flowers. And whether or not those Moorish gardeners were able to put their feet up for a few “hours of rest” each day (somehow I doubt it), their lush and appealing gardens certainly made it nice to go to work each day.

“In the Garden” runs weekly in Coast Weekend. Please send comments and gardening news to “In the Garden,” The Daily Astorian, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103 or online to peterson@pacifier.com