title: Merging subplots error - 'AxesSubplot' object has no attribute 'get_gridspec'
body: <p>Using python 2.7x, cannot upgrade as I'm on a managed windows system. I'm trying to follow this example to merge subplots but return the following error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>'AxesSubplot' object has no attribute 'get_gridspec'</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I've taken a look at other examples on here, but cannot find any that work with the build I'm using (Anaconda 2.7, Spyder IDE) Example from:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://matplotlib.org/tutorials/intermediate/gridspec.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://matplotlib.org/tutorials/intermediate/gridspec.html</a></p>
  
  <pre><code>fig9 = plt.figure(constrained_layout=False)
  gs1 = fig9.add_gridspec(nrows=3, ncols=3, left=0.05, right=0.48,
  wspace=0.05)
  f9_ax1 = fig9.add_subplot(gs1[:-1, :])
  f9_ax2 = fig9.add_subplot(gs1[-1, :-1])
  f9_ax3 = fig9.add_subplot(gs1[-1, -1])
  gs2 = fig9.add_gridspec(nrows=3, ncols=3, left=0.55, right=0.98,
  hspace=0.05)
  f9_ax4 = fig9.add_subplot(gs2[:, :-1])
  f9_ax5 = fig9.add_subplot(gs2[:-1, -1])
  f9_ax6 = fig9.add_subplot(gs2[-1, -1]) 
  </code></pre>