Cordoba’s festivals are a gardener's delight, but prepare for crowds

Being in Cordoba for the back-to-back celebration of its two biggest festivals is a Dickensian proposition: the best of times, the worst of times.

On the positive side, the city is decked out in its floral best. The Cruces de Mayo (May Crosses) sees religious fraternities compete to decorate crosses with flowers, while Los Patios de Cordoba has private buildings opening their lush interior gardens for the public to snoop. It's like the National Garden Scheme and the Chelsea Flower Show rolled into one. It's a properly local time to get a sense of the place: the overwhelming majority of the accents I heard were Spanish. And the good times keep rolling. First communion for Roman Catholic children is on or around 1 May, filling the streets with adorable little girls dressed as miniature brides and boys in their best jackets and ties. It's likely you might encounter a procession carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary with a brass band following behind. The whole place is a party.

With the merriment, of course, comes crowds. We're talking Disney-World-at-Christmas, London-tube-at-rush-hour, body-to-body crowds. And because these are Spaniards, there will be no orderly waiting. Watch out for the grandmothers. They may look benign, but they are professional queue bargers who will have a sharp elbow in the small of your back the moment you try to block their incursion. Every sunny al-fresco table is taken, every charming restaurant packed. And, of course, with crowds come pickpockets. I am a savvy traveller who hadn't been robbed in 30+ years of exploring Europe. A wily Cordoban lifted my wallet within 20 minutes of our first foray onto the streets.

My bottom line: if you're a keen gardener, it's a wonderful time to come ... you just need to develop strategies to cope with the crowds. If flowers aren't your thing, I suspect there are far better times to enjoy Cordoba's delights.

From a horticultural perspective, the crosses are a less impressive festival. Once you've seen a few, they start to look much the same. Each display uses the same size and shape of cross; many cover theirs in red roses or carnations. White with blue or lavender was a secondary favourite. Creativity comes from the floral displays around the crosses ... mostly pots of pelargoniums with a few branching out to a variety of plants and the occasional water feature. The most impressive made use of nearby architecture to deliver a wall of flower pots.

It quickly became obvious, however, that this is less about the flowers and more a progressive drinking party. Every fraternity gets sponsors, sets up a beer tent, has a particular tapa (snack) for purchase and sometimes has a band. Locals were having a fabulous time. We felt a bit surplus to requirements. I was undeniably in a rotten mood after the theft and an hour spent on the phone cancelling debit and credit cards, on top of another stress-inducing hour earlier in the day creeping a car through gridlocked traffic and crowds of pedestrians to reach our hotel's garage. I'd be willing to give the Crosses another try when better prepared both mentally and physically.

The patios were a different story. I was in gardeners' heaven.

Houses in Cordoba follow a model started by the Romans and continued by the Arabs: rooms are arranged around courtyards that provide private garden space and almost always have a water feature; long ago to capture a precious resource, today for pleasure. Brightly-coloured tiles often line the walls up to waist height. Arrays of flower pots affixed to the walls and paving of black-and-white cobbles set in various designs are recurring features. Cordobans, the general wisdom goes, are passionately proud and seriously competitive when it comes to these patios. Once a year they open them for charity. Admission is free but there are collections for owners' favourite causes. Plus prizes, people's favourites and plenty of local press coverage. From framed prizes and articles in many gardens it was clear that some owners opened year after year and had accumulated plenty of accolades. This year there were five "routes" with more than 60 gardens open to the public. (Maps are freely available from hotels, tourist information centres and all participating gardens.) Navigating can be a bit challenging; Cordoba's twisting, narrow lanes quickly sap your sense of direction. Fortunately enough locals are doing the routes that you can usually just follow other people with maps.

Here, I found the variety lacking in the crosses. Some patios were tiny, hardly more than light wells between several apartments. Others were grand processions of interlinked spaces. One joined a church, the priests' house and offices, with a baroque chapel between gardens. Some were white-walled sun-traps with arrays of potted pelargoniums and cascading bougainvillea, others bosky dells of ferns, hostas and mosses. Many had clear themes that presumably reflected their owners' passions: new age crystals and American Indian dream catchers; bullfighting; flamenco; tools of historic crafts. Several complemented the gurgling of water with the trills of caged songbirds; a few had impressive sound systems. One was even a doll's house courtyard produced in magnificent detail ... grains of rice for the patterned cobbles, tiny bits of rolled paper for the flowers ... in the front room of an artisan's workshop and gallery. Patio owners were usually on hand to talk details, but Spanish was a requirement to get into any horticultural specifics.

Once again, the trick with the patios was to get away from the most obvious tourist hot spots. Patios in the Alcazar Viejo district needed a wait of more than half an hour per property to get a peek. That's right next to major tourist attractions. I didn't bother. instead, I walked a mile to the furthest-flung and heavily residential Santa Marina and San Lorenzo districts, where I explored 18 different gardens during the 11 am - 2 pm morning opening and only queued once. (As with much of Spain, the Patios close for a long lunch break and re-open for an evening session.

If you're not in Cordoba during the festival, you can get a sense of the patio tradition at the Palacio de

Viana. This ancient aristocratic home has grown over the centuries, acquiring neighbouring buildings until it sprawls over the equivalent of several city blocks and encompasses 12 different courtyards. Like the patios in the festival, these display a wide range of styles from intimate domestic spaces to water gardens, orangeries and maze-like spreads of hedged parterres. Each has signs that explain the theme, design and planting of the patio in both Spanish and English. It' obvious that the current owners cherish and continue family history, as several of the courtyards feature either new schemes or significant renovations.

There's a two-tiered price structure; less for just the gardens and more for a full ticket that includes a house tour as well. My time was too short for both, but enticing glimpses into some rooms assured me that without all those other patios to see, I would have happily explored the interiors, too.

If you do plan to head to Cordoba for these festivals, always in late April and early May, book your hotel early. By January there was already very limited availability for any lodging in the historic district.