There are three important Moorish gardens which have survived. The oldest and the best preserved of these gardens is the Patio de los Naranjos (Court of the Orange Trees), next to Cordoba's great mosque. This garden is shown in the photograph above. Some sources say that this garden was laid out in 976 CE, while other sources say that the garden was first laid out in the late eighth century and that it was expanded in the late tenth century. At any rate, this is probably the oldest continuously maintained garden in Europe.
The Patio de los Naranjos is a rectangle, measuring about 60 by 120 meters. It is a bit inaccurate to say that the courtyard is next to the great mosque, because it was originally part of the mosque. The roof of the mosque is supported by a forest of columns. Originally these rows of columns were open to the courtyard and the trees in the courtyard continued the rows of columns, so the trees were part of the mosque's architecture. There is now only one central opening to the courtyard, the rest of the spaces between the columns were walled in after the mosque was converted into a church.
The main reason why the design of the Patio de los Naranjos has survived is because the irrigation system is an integral part of the garden's layout. The patio is divided into three equal parts, with three fountains feeding narrow irrigation channels. Each tree is watered by this grid of irrigation channels; that is why the symmetrical planting of the trees has never been changed.
The Patio de la Acequia (Court of the Long Pond) is the central garden of Granada's Generalife. This garden was created during the kaliphate of Ismail (1315 - 1325). The photo above shows the garden as it looks today. The lines of the garden have remained unchanged but we don't see the garden the way that its creators did. The narrow pond, which is almost 50 meters long, has remained unchanged as the garden's focal point, but the jets of water which arch over the pond are a fairly recent addition. There are planting beds along both sides of the pond these are divided into four beds by a path which crosses the pond at about the center of the garden. This path created a cross axis from a small mosque which no longer exists; it also allowed worshippers easy access to the pond for their ablutions.
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