Caring for centuries-old olive trees.
In recent years, we have come to view centuries-old olive trees as true living monuments.
The olive grove is part of the Arab-Andalusian garden, a garden in which the vegetable garden that provides food blends with flower beds, terraces of medicinal herbs, and finally the olive grove. The common thread is always the water that flows through a network of irrigation ditches and channels like blood through veins. For the Romans, olive oil was already a highly valued commodity, but the Romans were skilled engineers and mediocre farmers. The Andalusians were engineers who built on tradition and innovative agronomists who transformed the entire south of the peninsula and turned it into a veritable orchard.
True to their maxim of diversifying crops and innovating in methods and practices, they took olive cultivation to new heights by introducing more resilient new species in the 9th century and creating highly productive, perfectly integrated olive groves, thus harmonizing quantity, quality, and beauty within a single vision.
Today, what we call centuries-old or millennia-old olive trees come from those groves that, with the disappearance of Al-Andalus and its magnificent green revolution, were also replaced—many of them turned into firewood, others into ornamental trees.
In recent years, we have come to view these centuries-old olive trees as true living monuments. While the harvests from these groves may be smaller, the quality of their oil is excellent—an extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) that is liquid gold for the skin and the entire body.
EL JARDÍN DE HAMMAM is one of the very few brands that uses EVOO from thousand-year-old olive trees in the formulation of its products, and furthermore, EVOO sourced from the same mill., Almazara Casería de la Virgen, whose centuries-old, organically farmed olive groves are located in the Illora region. In the olive groves owned by Casería de la Virgen in these mountains of Granada, the Lucio olive variety predominates; we call it the Millennial Olive and add it to all our products, along with other extracts of organic EVOO from the same mill.
Thus, this EVOO, from which we extract essential active ingredients for skin care, becomes a love story—a love for the olive trees and the land they occupy, a love for the people who care for them and make it possible for them to continue existing and bearing fruit revered by generations.
Our commitment to the Argentata Foundation for the conservation of the Millennium Olive Tree is one of the pillars of our aspiration toward a circular and sustainable economy. A model in which beauty, well-being, and progress are not opposed but are part of the same whole—a way of thinking and acting that shaped the Andalusian civilization.