New Stories From 'Urban Agriculture Notes'
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Columbia: The City Is a Garden

Local gardeners like Dona Elena Villamil are creating a network of agroecological routes across Bogotá. Villamil’s huerta (garden) in the La Preservancia neighborhood is one of six gardens on the center-city route. Photo by Ocean Malandra.

In Bogotá, a network of urban agroecology projects is preparing the metropolis for an ecologically resilient future.

By Ocean Malandra
Earth Island Journal
January 3, 2022

Excerpt:

The European invaders put an end to this way of life, even uprooting the walnut tree forests that the Muisca held sacred and depended on for sustenance. But five centuries later, a new city project aims to restore Bogotá‘s food growing traditions, enhancing food security, building climate resilience, and strengthening local communities in the process.

“We are fortifying urban huertas (food gardens) both within public spaces and on privately and community owned spaces, and then tying them together with routes that will operate as trade corridors as well as tourist paths for exploring urban agriculture in Bogotá,” says Martha Liliana Perdomo, director of Bogotá‘s world-class Botanical Garden, which is spearheading the Bogotá es Mi Huerta (Bogotá is My Garden) project. The initiative connects, strengthens, and expands these oases of local food production into a web of urban agroecology meant to transform the city into a sustainable metropolis ready to thrive in an uncertain future.

Read the complete article here.