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Focusing on Lisbon's green urban renewal under the liberal regime between 1840 and 1900, this article shows how the construction of green urban infrastructure became a part of the liberal agenda for modernizing the capital. The history of Lisbon's nineteenth-century public gardens and parks and tree-lined avenues has received scant attention, but this article reveals the pioneering role played by Lisbon City Council Department of Gardens and Green Grounds and the subsequent creative adaptation of Parisian green urban renewal programmes to Lisbon. These two phases corresponded to the leadership of different professional groups – gardeners and engineers, whose authority derived not only from their expertise but from their role in the making of scientific authority. Finally, this article highlights how the value ascribed to engineering as being more 'techno-scientific' than gardening dictated the outcome of the rivalry between gardeners and engineers with the eventual demise of the Department of Gardens and Green Grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the 1940s Lisbon Flower Exhibitions and their impact on the press served the propaganda of the Portuguese dictatorship as they fostered and disseminated a positive image of the government's policies and competencies. The propaganda used the garden culture to fabricate an idea of national identity, bestowing Portugal as a modern and culturally elevated regime. Based on archive files and press clippings, this research demonstrates that constructing the concept of 'national flowers' was used to fuel the pride of nationalistic feelings according to the regime's policy. However, the investigation also revealed an inconsistency between narrative and practice in designing and applying this concept, as exotic or 'foreign' plants continued to appear side by side with the native ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the turn of the nineteenth century, agriculture in Spain was seen as an empirical know-how that was transmitted from generation to generation through practice. However, at the royal gardens the idea that agriculture was a scientific branch of knowledge was already germinating. Focusing on the two brothers—Claudio (1774–1842) and Esteban (1776–1812) Boutelou—this paper argues that these gardeners, profiting from their positions at the Spanish royal gardens, promoted agronomic development and education. In spite of the importance of the Boutelou family, a five-generation dynasty of gardeners, historiography has paid scant attention to them, as well as to the importance of agronomic travels and their reports. This paper aims at interweaving the boundaries between the history of science, history of agriculture, and gardens and landscape studies. Through the lenses of history of science and the application of Long's conceptual framework of 'trading zones' and Baldassarri and Matei's 'gardens as laboratories', we focus on the position of the Boutelou brothers in the gardens of the royal estates and the new Sanlúcar acclimatization garden. We then demonstrate how they were influenced by travels abroad and how Arthur Young, a Briton, became their role model. Moreover, we establish a relation between the Boutelou's network of experts and the rise of translations of English and French books and the appearance of the first agricultural teaching manuals in Castilian, often published in the context of agricultural societies. Finally, we show how this was fundamental to the renewal of agronomic practices and education in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]