Huatulco Community Garden - Demonstration space for food sovereignty

In August 2020, Solidaridad Huatulco began building a community garden in front of the Semarnat offices in La Crucecita, Huatulco. The project arose as a citizen initiative focused on food sovereignty, in the face of the economic crisis caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which has caused the population to lose jobs, income, or to find themselves in financial difficulties to access decent food.

The community garden is intended to generate a prototype that can be replicated in other public spaces, for example, the schools located in the tourist community of Santa Cruz Huatulco. The collective effort brings together the work of visual artists, builders, designers and farmers, integrating cultural management in the community; as well as the work of professionals in the fields of anthropology, history, traditional medicine and journalism, committed to a pluralistic vision for community development.

The community garden has 5 areas for the community: an edible wild garden, a pre-Hispanic garden, an urban garden, a cactus and agave garden, and a recreational area.

The covered part of the garden was built with local bamboo. The concept comes from Claudio Elias, a bioconstructor architect from Pluma Hidalgo, Oaxaca. Bamboo is a very versatile, fast growing material, ideal for ecological and sustainable construction. It is flexible and resistant, and has a low cost compared to other types of materials. It also has a low energy consumption, which helps bring the project closer to having a green footprint as much as possible.

The garden contains several low cultivation beds, where we can plant different types of vegetables, such as lettuce and tomato, or medicinal plants. Next to the covered garden we plant other types of vegetables such as hibiscus and corn. With the beds we also wanted to generate attractive tours for the public, to awaken people's interest and encourage them to apply the same concept in other places as well.

For Solidaridad Huatuco, the total cost of this project resulted in 20'000 Pesos so far. The cost comes almost 100% from the purchase of materials, since for the construction we received enormous help from volunteers from different collectives in Huatulco, such as the Colectivo Tilcoatle. On behalf of Solidaridad Huatulco we would like to thank all these volunteers for their invaluable efforts.

We also want to thank CONANP-Parque National Huatulco and the Municipality of Huatulco for letting us use the space to carry out the project. With nothing else for the moment, we invite you to visit the new #Community Garden and enjoy the result of this last collective effort!

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