Urban Gardens in Puente de Vallecas

Hello again! We continue our route through the urban gardens of Madrid with the District of Puente de Vallecas.Puente de Vallecas is one of the 21 districts of the city of Madrid and is administratively organized into the neighborhoods of Entrevías, San Diego, Palomeras Bajas, Palomeras Sureste, Portazgo and Numancia. With 240,917 inhabitants, it is one of the most populated districts of the City. It is located to the southeast of the municipality of Madrid, bounded by the M-30 to the west, the A-3 to the north, Avenida de la Democracia, the Madrid-Zaragoza railway line and the M-40 to the southeast, and the Manzanares River to the southwest. In turn, Puente de Vallecas borders the districts of Villa de Vallecas,to the east, Moratalaz, to the north, Retiro and Arganzuela, to the west, and Usera, to the southwest. Are you already located? Well, let’s see their orchards!

Orchards in Puente de Vallecas

We are going to see some of the orchards that you can find in the district of Puente de Vallecas

Garden of El Pozo del Tío Raimundo

In the neighborhood of El Pozo del Tío Raimundo, given the rural origin of its population, there is extensive experience in orchards and gardens. The El Pozo Neighborhood Association, in collaboration with a group of interested neighbors, wanted to recover these experiences and promote them through this project.

Spinaka Garden

The Espinakas urban garden began with the environment and ecology working group of the Popular Assembly of the 15m of Puente de Vallecas. In the first meetings, the group’s lines of action were defined: urban garden, environmental education and responsible consumption and self-consumption. In Vallecas there are many lots without any use and completely abandoned on the verge of becoming a landfill and a risk for the neighborhood. For this reason, it was decided to convert a degraded area into a meeting space, between the people of the neighborhood, and between the countryside and the city. The Espinakas garden is an open space in which anyone who wishes can participate. They open on Sundays at 12 noon, on Pablo Neruda Avenue on the corner of Villalobos.

SCHOOL ORCHARDS

As you know, there is a growing trend in Madrid regarding the implementation of organic gardens in schools, and those of Puente de Vallecas are no exception. Let’s see some of them:

Orchard in CEIP Palomeras Bajas

The Palomeras Bajas public school has an ecological garden for the development of different activities with the students. The main objective of the orchard commission (formed by parents of students from the center) is to support the teaching activities that the teachers carry out with the students in this space. To do this, different maintenance and preparation tasks are carried out in the garden, such as the creation of a «corner of the garden» in the school, maintenance of the vermicomposter (red worm) and the compost bin, as well as the care of the different crops. With all these tasks, the orchard is improving little by little at all levels and thus, each timeIt is acquiring a greater protagonism in the life of the school. The main objective is to have fun and learn in this open space, for all those who want to get closer. You can come on Thursdays from 4:15 p.m.

Orchard in CEIP Asturias

Within the «Educate today for a more sustainable Madrid» program of the Madrid City Council, this school has benefited from the necessary support for the start-up of a school garden. Work has been done and improved to consolidate this project, so much so that they were the garden chosen for the cover of the “Nature and Biodiversity” section of the guide “Educating today for a more sustainable Madrid for the 2012/2013 academic year”. This fact is a recognition of all those who participate in this project and put their efforts so that day by day the orchard acquires more relevance in everyone’s life.

Orchard in CEE Vallecas

It is a special education center that began to participate in 2008 in the Orchards and School Gardens project. At that time, they had a Transition to Adult Life (TVA) classroom that worked exclusively on this subject. Now they have decided to participate in the “ Educate today for a more sustainable Madrid” program with the Nature and biodiversity module to give continuity to a project that they see as being of great educational use. The orchard commission is the one that is now in charge of centralizing all the organization of the tasks around it and other activities for sustainability in the center.

Orchard in CEIP Manuel Núñez de Arenas

The members of this public school are aware of the great wealth and multitude of resources that the natural environment offers. They recognize that they are lucky enough to have a large outdoor space where the orchard has been built. A great place to be with others, enjoy the land, play with the water, plant vegetables, observe their growth and, above all, take care of them. Around the garden, topics such as natural fertilizers, cultivation tasks in the different seasons of the year, the properties of the vegetables they grow or the seedbeds are discussed.What they intend is to promote respect for nature as a source of life, combine theoretical aspects with practical and manipulative ones, encourage cooperative work and creative playful activity in direct contact with the natural environment and develop healthy eating and living habits.

Other orchards in Vallecas

The above are just some of the school gardens in Puente de Vallecas, however, the Vallecas I Secondary Education Institute, the El Madroñal School of Early Childhood Education, the Carlos Sáinz de los Terreros and Javier de Miguel Public Schools for Early Childhood and Primary Education., as well as Colegio Gredos San Diego, also have an organic garden as a tool for educational innovation.

This is all! If you know any of these orchards in Vallecas or you think I have left one out, do not hesitate to comment. !Until next time!