Huerta Zambrana

Located in La Serna, beside Castillo de Baños and in the area richest in water, the Huerta Zambrana is possibly the best representation of this type of native cultural landscape: the late medieval vegetable garden of Baños de la Encina.

In all cases, the garden is laid out in a more or less similar fashion: a large area of fertile ground is surrounded by a high and characteristic stone wall topped with gabled slate tiles, which evacuate water away from the wall. The high stone wall once highlighted the privacy of the land while protecting produce from the livestock.

Inside, a constant factor is the presence of a huge waterwheel leading the water directly to a stone water tank or, as in this case, through a stone aqueduct. On a few occasions, you can also see a complementary well, as we have here. The house had a lean-to roof and was made of beautifully worked blocks of stone, and it sheltered the tools, working and pack animals, and a group of other animals that grew fat eating perishable or unwanted produce. In this case, at the Huerta Zambrana, there is a complementary area for winnowing the cereal.