It’s been a few weeks since I was last in my garden, and despite all the fun and excitement of my recent travels, I’ve actually experienced a bit of garden withdrawal. So I decided to do a bit of a community garden tour while I was traveling around Europe.
The biggest gardening inspiration came in Spain, when I happened to come across the Huerto Urbano Comunitario de Aldelfus in Madrid.
I literally stumbled across the Adelfus Garden in the most unlikely spot: right beside one of the main railroad lines bringing trains from across the country into Madrid’s busy Atocha station. Frankly, I’d written the street off as a derelict urban wasteland, with an abandoned lot on one side and the railway on the other. I was busy looking for the fastest route to a more charming part of the city, when all of sudden, out of nowhere I came across Adelfus, like a little garden oasis and community hub sprouting up beside the tracks.
The Adelfus garden broke ground in 2010, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the local neighbourhood association. The garden was part of a recovery plan to help revitalize a part of the neighbourhood that had become particularly run down and abandoned, and the goal was to increase public green space and create a place for the community – particularly children – to come together.
The Adelfus garden has become an inter-generational community hub, where everyone from seniors to school children devotes time to maintaining the garden.
From a space and size perspective, my pictures don’t do the garden justice. The fact that there are a few small fruit trees planted gives a bit of an indication of the space that is available to Adelfus, and as you can see from the pictures, they’ve only dug into a small portion of the land.
They also make incredibly good use of recycled and post consumer materials, found onsite and elsewhere in the neighbourhood. Old wooden pallets have been stacked together become containers and trellises for planting beans. Tires have become pots for ornamental plants that attract pollinators and add colour to the garden. Any type of old piping, rod or stick contributes to staking the tomatoes. Scrap wood and old roof tiles decoratively line the perimeter of the beds.
Its also obvious that Adelfus is a real community enterprise, with tables and chairs interspersed between garden beds and a large mural decorating the large concrete wall that divides the garden from the train tracks. While I was there visiting the garden, a number of families stopped by to wander through the garden. This unlikely space has been transformed from urban waste land to an inviting space for the community to use and enjoy.
The Urban Locavore 