A Garden in Three Movements

The garden of Casa Madriguera is a record of three moments in a garden. A garden that is born alongside the house, but above all, that will remain after it. This is a situated garden: Madriguera, a small village belonging to the network of Red and Black Villages of the Sierra de Ayllón, Segovia. The project unfolds in a context centered on landscape, recorded in several of its forms: from the geological condition of the surrounding territory, composed of clays, slate, quartzites, and ferruginous breccias, to the native flora interwoven with cultivated land, aromatic plants, rockroses, oaks, and holm oaks. The house and the garden open a linear gap between the existing walls of an irregular plot, transforming one another over time, as a form of relationship that fosters man's self-understanding within his territory. The predominant underground water resources of the site will sustain an increasingly autonomous garden.

First movement, The agricultural landscape: The local economy is largely based on the extensive cultivation of wheat, barley, oats, and endemic aromatic plants such as lavender, rosemary, thyme, and sage. This first phase appears almost immediately, driven by the need to establish an initial layer of low vegetation that begins to enrich the soil, worn down by earthmoving and adjacent construction. These are plants that require abundant direct light and grow rapidly. The young trees introduced are native species that form part of the agricultural landscape, first in their isolated form among crops: oaks, holm oaks, Portuguese oaks, and fig trees. Initially small in stature, these trees barely reduce the light reaching the emerging flora, yet nourish the soil through every season.

Second movement, The landscape of rockroses and wanderers: The garden is a landscape in constant change, with spaces anticipated for the arrival of species in transit. This landscape is part of the place and shifts across the seasons, verbenas, poppies, rockroses, alongside the deciduous leaves of each season. The landscape of the wanderers cannot be controlled and gives rise to a changing garden. This mutable landscape mingles with the rapidly growing aromatics and the maturing trees; together with the walls, they gradually create an internal microclimate of greater shade and humidity. This is the moment in which the current garden finds itself.

Third movement, The forest: The forest is the first garden, long before the enclosed garden, but also the last. We understand the contemporary garden as the restoration of an environment: the garden as a territory of protection, a territory from which we come. The third movement corresponds to a place of dense canopies, of shade and moisture, where the extensive aromatic plants that required full sun have given way to other species that demand barely any attention: wild flora interweaves with moss, fallen oak leaves, and ripened fruit. The garden self-regulates and endures, like the forest, against the harsh climate of the future.