He had the trees here on the outskirts of Palmera wrapped in silver-grey fabrics, as if Christo had been at work.

Each drape is different, each shape has a new accent, each shadow varies throughout the day, and he has always used as much fabric as if it were a real stage curtain.

It's actually a bit like that, because when this curtain is lifted again one day, the tree has staged itself anew, blossoms or even fruit have developed, and branches have pushed up into the crown.

And when flowers have opened, an intense fragrance spreads over the surroundings, as if someone had left an oversized bottle open.

"It's as if no other place on earth is closer to the biblical paradise," says Vicente Todolí about his living open-air museum.

"A garden, a plantation,

That's exactly what he wanted when he took over the land in the immediate vicinity of his parents' and grandparents' house.

In the first step, he demolished greenhouses for ornamental herbs, unsealed thousands of square meters of soil, had concrete rubble removed in dozens of truckloads - and started this plantation from scratch, according to his ideas.

That was more than 20 years ago, but he only wants to show them off more recently.

Like a big show in a museum: it first has to come about in the mind, mature, and be carefully curated.

Works of art must be procured, staged and illuminated.

All of this takes time.

If you are dependent on nature, on coincidences, experiments, the weather, then you cannot say at the beginning when the opening will be.

Countless experiments

For seven years, Vicente Todolí was director of the Tate Modern Gallery in London, one of the most renowned art museums in the world.

Today he takes care of the exhibitions of the Pirelli Foundation in Italy.

And around this garden a good 60 kilometers south of Valencia, in the hinterland of the Costa Blanca near Gandia: his Todolí Citrus Fundació, on the land of the ancestors.

This is where he grew up, this is where he played under the orange trees as a child.

"All summer long I devoured books, looked and read again in the shade of these trees." The area with its air, its light and the smell of citrus blossoms was a source of inspiration for the man who was to make a world career as an art historian.

"In past centuries, philosophers, poets and painters came to such gardens," he says.

“Because these places inspired her.

Todolí collects citrus fruits.

He wants every citrus fruit in the world in his garden and has even had a test kitchen built so that top chefs such as Quique Dacosta with a total of six Michelin stars from three restaurants in Dénia, Madrid and Valencia and Manuel Alonso from Daimus near Gandia have one Michelin star where you can create new sauces, dips, marinades, fillings, ice cream flavors, pastries and dishes using rare fruits.

Together with Dacosta he is working on a book, the "Libro de los Cítricos", with many photos - and suitable recipes.

Alonso, meanwhile, has already devised a nine-course menu where the citrus is the key – even the bacalao croquette, whose cod fillet was initially slow-simmered in Valetta lime juice.