Urban gardens in the district of HORTALEZA – Madrid

Hello Farmers! As we had somewhat forgotten our walk through the orchards of Madrid, today we return to the fray with the urban orchards of Hortaleza, a district of Madrid located northeast of the municipality. The neighborhoods that make up the district are: Pinar del Rey, Canillas, Valdefuentes, Apóstol Santiago, Piovera and Palomas and it has a population of 173,966 inhabitants. It limits with the districts of Barajas, San Blas-Canillejas, Ciudad Lineal and Fuencarral-El Pardo, and with the municipality of Alcobendas.

Beneath the asphalt and cement of Hortaleza, some orchards are being cultivated, so…let’s get to know them!

COMMUNITY ORCHARDS IN THE HORTALEZA DISTRICT

Villa Rosa Neighborhood Garden

The Villa Rosa Neighborhood Garden is a project that was born from the neighbors of the neighborhood and whose main purpose is to generate an open space for the participation of all the neighbors of the neighborhood, in which values ​​such as teamwork and mutual cooperation, in addition to contributing to environmental awareness through the recovery of degraded and disused spaces. On the other hand, the ecological nature of the orchard is presented as a way of integrating with the environment and respecting nature.

You can find it on a plot of municipal property delimited by El Provencio and Mota del Cuervo streets, in front of the Luis Aragonés Municipal Sports Center

Manoteras Knot Popular Orchard

Under abandonment, apathy and laziness, the neighbors found the site where the orchard stands today. For many years they have seen it empty, full of weeds and garbage, so they have decided to recover it and form something as beautiful as a community urban garden.

To do so, they had to jump over difficulties: neighbors alarmed at the unknown, land that looked like soil and was later a buried dump, the very prevention of occupation… Finally, after much effort, what has resulted is not just an orchard, but a community space to transform a visible idea.

What is intended with the garden is:

• Recover space, since spaces of this type within the increasingly controlled urban environment, favor the possibilities of interaction between people and the environment and encourage examples of action and restructuring to emerge. Launching a community urban garden project also allows us to recover another forgotten space: knowledge about the origin of food, the relationship with the land and the climate, and the discovery of the power of transforming everyday consumerism into production.
• Learn and share spaces, knowledge and crops with friends, neighborhood residents and interested people from all places, genders and ages.
• Build another way of living. The challenge is to reach the pleasure of eating what one plants.

“La Kúpina Morera” orchard (Sanchinarro)

This is one of the urban orchards that the Sanchinarro Neighborhood Association has achieved, after submitting to the competition recently launched by the Madrid City Council. The urban garden of Sanchinarro was born with the purpose of being a meeting and recreation place for the entire neighborhood, at the same time that it wishes to offer the inhabitants of the neighborhood, schools, and entities the possibility of enjoying an open space, in which to carry out fruit and vegetable crops and environmental workshops, as well as educational, healthy, landscape and socio-communicative functions.

The work of the “ La Kúpina Morera ” orchard focuses on conditioning the land, creating areas for fruit and vegetable cultivation, construction of furniture for use using recycled materials provided by the City Council and continuing training in horticulture through the Information Center and Environmental Education “ The Retiro Garden ”. They also have the experience of the orchards that are part of the Madrid Community Urban Orchard Network.

The orchard, which has an area of ​​about 1,200 m2, is located at the confluence of Calle Oña and Calle Infanta María. The only requirement that all the people who participate in the orchard must meet is that they must become members of the Sanchinarro Neighborhood Association, simply paying €15 per year, in order to get involved in the work that the Association has been carrying out. to improve the facilities of the neighbourhood.

SCHOOL ORCHARDS IN HORTALEZA

As you know, orchards are colonizing schools in Madrid, and in Hortaleza we have several examples:

CEIP Virgen del Cortijo (Valdefuentes neighborhood)

The objectives pursued with this educational garden project are based on acquiring knowledge about the immediate environment and making students aware of the beauty of their school environment, knowing the many uses that plants have and, consequently, continuing to use and cultivate them., and introduce the student in the productive world.

The tasks are divided between the different cycles, both for Pre-school and Primary Education, among which planting and caring for garden areas stand out. The garden has some tablets with the name of the plants in Spanish and English since it is a bilingual center, so the garden is used to also work on vocabulary in this language.

CEIP Ramón Pérez de Ayala

In this school, the books, notebooks and pencils have made room for the terraces and the seeds of tomatoes and other vegetables in its, increasingly consolidated, school garden.

The idea was consolidated after the disappearance of the old caretaker’s house. There was a wild space full of weeds that they decided to clean up. Through the Employment Agency they sent some gardeners and it was they who came up with the idea of ​​making a garden.

The students are in charge of taking care of the garden. Each class is distributed land and a different type of seed and the care of the garden is daily, the children water every day and observe how their crops develop, which they love.

Other schools in Hortaleza with a vegetable garden:

• CEIP Philosopher Seneca
• CEIP Father Poveda
• ISS Giants and Big Heads
• ISS Gran Via

This is all! I hope that it has helped you to find orchards in Hortaleza and that you are encouraged to visit them. Until next time!