BotGarden

Saturday 16th November 2024. Answer: Firstly, by no longer taking part in ineffective UN climate conferences, such as the one currently taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan (COP 29). On the one hand, we should stop flying*, and, on the other hand, we should systematically plant new, young trees in sensible places. Biologist Sonia Soares from Algoz practised this last Friday: with children from the Silves South school group in Algoz, at the EB 2/3 school. On the one hand, she is reducing the carbon footprint and burning less paraffin and, on the other hand, converting the CO2 already in the …

Saturday 9th November 2024. We recently had a very special kind of visitor. One Sunday morning, at ECO123’s botanical forest garden in Caldas de Monchique, we were visited (without being asked) by hunters with their dogs. Then the shooting started. I shouted loud and clear that they should please be considerate and stop their shooting immediately, and I was lucky. They left our magazine’s private property, although they were not happy about it, because they wanted to shoot partridges and hares and take them away with them. That set me thinking. Since then, I’ve been wondering whether these hunters learned …

Saturday 19th October 2024. Every botanical garden has something magical about it. Whenever I visit a botanical garden, I imagine that I am immersed in a magic world of trees, plants and little hidden animals. Furnas, on the island of São Miguel in the Azores, enchanted me from the very beginning. By chance, I had my swimming trunks and a towel with me and came across a huge round swimming pool with warm water from volcanic geysers in the middle of the forest. The water wasn’t clear and clean; no, it was brown, like the earth, and smelled a little …

Saturday 20th April 2024. Do you know the beauty of wild orchids? Have you ever made a tea from lime blossom? Do you know the lavender-scented pillows that help you sleep? Those who love nature move within it carefully and, above all, mindfully. Because two feet can easily trample a valuable plant, a herb or a small, recently-planted tree. In a valley known as Esgravatadouro, the balance of nature was completely destroyed during several forest fires in 2003 and 2018, and, in order to protect the area from further destruction, the publisher of the magazine ECO123 bought the valley and …

Saturday the 12th of August 2023. Gallows’ humour in our own backyard? ECO123 and the new Botanical Garden at Caldas de Monchique: it’s not that easy to be close to a forest fire and write a story about possible solutions to climate change. Where should this story begin, and where can it end? Baiona, Alentejo. A barbecue triggers this gigantic conflagration. So this time it’s a wood-fired grill. The list of stories surrounding the reasons behind forest fires is long. If no-one has deliberately started the fire, it was not caused by intent but by gross negligence; in any case …

Saturday the 15th of July 2023. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the use of fossil fuels has released enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is a gas that reduces heat reflection from the Earth, leading to the rise in temperatures on our planet. Every year sees the addition of several billions of tons of carbon dioxide. Today we know that these will remain for centuries in the earth’s atmosphere. The speed of the earth heating up has long been underestimated. Its consequences are dramatic: ice melting, rising sea levels, devastating forest fires and ever worse …

Saturday 1st July 2023. This story begins with the loss of woodlands. The error that is committed (not only) in Monchique is probably that the forest, ie nature, is always only viewed as a commercial space. This means that any investment in forests has to yield a profit, for otherwise this investment is not worth our while. Now this refers not only to financial interests but also to labour, the physical investment, involving hours, days and weeks. So is the forest nothing but a commercial surface, something like a sausage factory? Doesn‘t the forest also hold something fundamentally honourable: conservation, …

Saturday the 24th of June 2023. Those walking from Caldas de Monchique to Esgravatadouro, continuing on to Fornalha and taking the short PR5 route up to the summit of Picota cross what you could call a minefield of millions of acacia and mimosa trees. Some of them six feet high, others a little shorter still, some already taller, they reach the rim of the tarmac road. Hikers will be crossing the dead country left after the 2018 forest fires. This is where the wild shoots of acacia and mimosa grow on both sides of the tarmac, and no council whatsoever …

Saturday 17th June 2023. There is at least one of the 308 districts of Portugal where democracy was never really thought through to its logical conclusion. Despite the fact that in Monchique too the coming year will bring the fiftieth birthday of revolutionary celebrations, an important promise is being allowed to lapse – namely the narrative of a better future through wealth. For wealth is the exact lofty magic word and the cosy state of being that many citizens were hoping for (not only) in Monchique as a result of the Carnation Revolution 1974 and of membership in the great …