To get across the fertile
land and vegetable patchs north of Valencia, huerta, is a pure
delight for the senses as we got experience recently leading as a
Tourist guide the Vera group.
This land, known as
Cabanyal, is located close to the well known Poltyechnical
University, and can be designed as our "garden of Valencia"
at a threw of stone, That's the title of a recent TV program, where
the news reader described this landscape as one of the most fertile
soils in the world, with an irrigation system that keeps going on
since its beginning in medieval times and some farmhouses known as
“alquerías”, representing at all an example of coexistence
between cultures and with nature. As stated by Carl Steinitz,
professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University, it should
be a unique space in the world but also one of the few of its value
without a uniform and constant planning management.
Huerta of Valencia Typical Barraca
In the eastside, we remark
some heritage as the canal or water-ditch of Vera and the Catholic
hermitage of Notre Dame of Vera. The group prepared and enjoy a full
taste traditional paella in one of the farmhouses, the Carmen House.
Carmen Farmhouse Vera Eremitory
Besides is located The
Mariluz Farm, next to ours, where it is offered affordable menus for
visitors, with the opportunity to share a landscape that scholars and
students compare with that of France. Also in the garden of Alboraya
can on pick up those vegetables that enter in the paella receipt and
the valencian salad and enjoy in their own place the local
production, as tasting a traditional “horchata” drink .
In the neighboring
Cabanyal district, we can mention, the French botanist and adventure
Felix Robillard, which led to the first integration between landscape
and agricultural industry, an industry related also with flowers,
herbs and perfume. Crossing the “Cabanyal”, at the half of the
nineteenth century was a sort of adventure because of its vegetation
that looked like a swamp, whose barriers were saved by boat. The area
was a marsh. This happened until the Frenchman Felix Robillard bought
361,526 meters square of land with the idea of rehabilitating
the area. The gardener and botanist dried out the ground and used for
this purpose several plant species, including large amounts of
"geranium odoratissimun" the popular Malvarrosa. Robillard
divided his property into three main areas: his house at San Rafael,
the essences factory, next to it the area where species were planted
for making oils, perfumes, and soap.
his Venture has today a
square dedicated to his name where oncce stood the family house with
22 rooms and a garden of 6848 meters, according to the the researcher
and writer Antonio Sanchis in his book on “Malvarrosa” . This
factory was the first of this essences established in Spain and the
first of toilet soaps and perfumery established in Valencia.
Next to the shrine of
Vera, we further observe a property known as Hort dels
Misteris. The name “pass” well to the environment since
then from childhood we were surprised of that very mistery dense of
palm trees vegetation surrounded by a high wall and that farmhouse at
the background you could barely imagine all sorts of ghosts or crimes
inside. The farmstead is now known as Robillard, residing there
several descendants of the French gardener, including a
great-grandson. They bought the manor 25 years because it resemble to
that of their predecessor.
Robillard's Manor Entrance
The farmhouse was built by
the manufacturer Vicente Tatay Mandingorra. The designer of the
garden was his son Francisco Garrido. The Priest, Father Luis
Fullana, who had a good relationship with Tatay, wrote in there most
of his works about valencian language and celebrated Mass in that
chapel that no longer exists.
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Hort dels Misteris con sus palmeras
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