Il giardino dei semplici

Summary of the project

The association Ri-puliamoci was used to organise cleaning days as part of its mandate, which foresees the maintenance and restoration of the green areas in Altamura, a small city in Southern Italy.
With this project, the idea is to go beyond by regenerating an entire green area through a durable intervention with the direct involvement of the citizenship, who will become more responsible and attentive towards the protection of public green areas.
The main activity is tough a course on permaculture to make this method to design and manage man-made landscapes known to the citizenship. Moreover, the permaculture course aims to bring citizenship closer to this discipline, to train a group of activists operating in the territory, to contribute to the recover a degraded green area in the suburbs, realizing a “garden of the simples” and to constitute an open source course always accessible to everybody.

Beneficiaries

• 5.000 citizens

Overall achievements

The course “Sinergie, permaculture paths” allowed the association to increase the number of activists and the community’s attention on environmental issues. Thanks to the course (eight lessons – seven in the classroom and one practice in the garden) the students (36 people from different age and origin) were able to learn and deepen the different themes related to permaculture with the practical collective realization of the “Giardino dei Semplici” garden. At the end of the course emerged the desire of all participants, teachers and volunteers do not stopped the enthusiasm and the request was to keep in touch through the mailing list and social networks for a continuous exchange of contacts and knowledge. Among the main lessons learned, thanks to the presence of a woman with motor disabilities, there is the importance of willpower, with it is possible change the world positively. Everyone can do something to improve their habits and to protect the planet.