S'Hort des Correu, the lost garden of Mallorca, remains abandoned and without a buyer

ManacorIn March 2022, the Servera family, linked to the Drac de Portocristo caves, put the S'Hort des Correu estate, on the outskirts of Manacor, up for sale. This definitively ended a century-old relationship between the space and the town, and with one of the most curious myths of Sant Joan's night. Around those dates, more than four years ago, the Llull family, the last caretakers of the house, had already left El Correu three years prior, shortly before the pandemic. And with them, the tradition of the magic vimer, the tree capable of curing hernias, had disappeared, once a year, for children who passed naked through its branches at sunrise on the shortest night, always at 6:20 AM.

Now that eight years will have passed without a vimer, the estate remains closed and for sale. No longer for that initial 1.2 million, but for 750,000 euros, according to the real estate portal Idealista, which, in addition to offering the technical data of the property (the plot is 26,000 m² and a built area of approximately 600 m²), explains that "there is the possibility of conditioning 12 bedrooms and other rooms such as an entrance lounge, a living and dining room with very high ceilings and a very large kitchen with access to the beautiful patio. The exterior part is almost completely surrounded by old stone walls. The well with an old fountain, the immense water pond, several courtyards, open and covered terraces form the perfect setting for the creation of a paradisiacal garden".

The redirection to the First Mallorca sales portal, based in Calvià, also suggests the possibility that S'Hort des Correu could "be easily transformed into a rural guesthouse with its own restaurant", in addition to including nearby local geographical references such as "the center of Manacor and Rafel Nadal's tennis academy, the proximity to Portocristo and numerous maritime coves, as well as the direct highway connection to Palma and the airport".

Botanical garden

But returning to the 'paradisiacal garden' referred to in the promotional announcement, we know that S'Hort des Correu was indeed a space for agricultural experimentation very close to the village. In a modernist style with ceramic elements typical of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this somewhat disordered, English-style location, close to the houses of S'Hort des Correu, gathered a large quantity and variety of trees, healing plants, and shrubs.

Located at the exit of Manacor towards Portocristo, it was in the last years of the 19th century that the brothers Joan and Miquel Amer Servera 'Correu' designed a botanical garden there to complement and give prestige to the irrigated agricultural exploitation. For scientific and recreational purposes, the garden (now abandoned) still has the magic nursery, where until two years ago dozens of children with hernias passed through the branches on the morning of Sant Joan.

Notable were the gallon-shaped hydrangeas and those worked like a plane from an oval section, in addition to pilasters intended to support the pots and the railing of the laundry room with rectangular balusters formed by the superposition of semicircles with vegetal ornamentation. The botanical garden was, at the same time, a welcoming space for recreation and relaxation.

Belonging for a time to the Sa Font Nova estate, it occupied (and still occupies) an area of four acres of vegetables and grain. In front of the house entrance stands a sandstone bench with pots of earthenware, with a washhouse that had a promenade with benches for rest and observation of the garden. Now only some orange trees and remains of a hexagonal terrace are left. Also some channels that were used to bring water from a well.