{"id":71681,"date":"2024-10-18T20:40:15","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T19:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eco123.info\/en\/?p=71681"},"modified":"2024-10-18T20:40:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T19:40:15","slug":"the-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eco123.info\/en\/news\/the-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"The journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday 19th October 2024.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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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 S\u00e3o 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 of sulphur. I carefully let myself slide into the pool. And the temperature was just under 30 degrees Celsius. Wonderful! In winter, of course, it was an oasis of well-being; in summer, you couldn’t spend more than 15 minutes in it. So, whenever I visit a botanical garden today \u2013 no matter where \u2013 I have the impression that this magic will continue. Whether I\u2019m in Lisbon or in Gothenburg (Sweden), where there are old botanical gardens, I am always struck by the peace and tranquillity that these natural hideaways offer me, despite all the noise of these big cities. You enter the garden and are immediately swallowed up; you don\u2019t want to escape the pull of nature. So, I have got into the habit of conducting all my interviews in Lisbon on a bench in the botanical gardens. Escaping the hustle and bustle of daily life, finding peace, regaining inner equilibrium, floating and communicating with one another.<\/p>\n

I travelled to Moncarapacho (in the Eastern Algarve) last week and began looking for \u201cPomar dos Sabores\u201d (the Orchard of Flavours). I couldn\u2019t find it at first, because it was hidden, so I developed the idea that I was looking for a hidden treasure and that I would find it. After travelling exactly one hundred kilometres (from Monchique), I arrived and cautiously entered this park of edible plants and trees. As I made my way around, I came across a group of visitors on a guided tour, and I decided that I would like to join them. I caught up with the group when they arrived at the edible succulents and was welcomed into it by Miguel Cotton, the Belgian father<\/em> of the project. During the tour, we arranged an interview via ZOOM for the following day. Firstly, we visited the small Miyawaki forest of fruit trees: the moringa trees were not to be missed; papaya also grows well in the Eastern Algarve, as do many other plants \u2013 the coffee tree, for example.<\/p>\n

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I already knew that the botanist Akira Miyawaki died three years ago, in July 2021, at the ripe old age of 93, because I had studied this Japanese botanist in some depth. He left us the so-called Miyawaki forest, and his model caught my interest because these small forests can grow in less than 20 years…<\/p>\n

The Miyawaki method is a reforestation technique whereby crops of fast-growing native trees are planted, in a variety of dense mixed planting that is intended to simulate the layers of a natural forest. Akira Miyawaki won the Blue Planet Prize in 2006. The Blue Planet Prize recognises outstanding achievements in scientific research or in the application of science that contribute to solving global environmental problems.<\/p>\n

The method that was developed in the early 1970s by the ecologist Akira Miyawaki for regenerating forests that have degenerated, for example, as a result of forest fires or the planting of monocultures, consists of the following steps: identifying the plant species native to a particular area; improving the soil by mixing in organic material; planting seedlings of native trees and understory plants in a dense, mixed form (about three seedlings per square metre) in order to simulate a natural forest; removing weeds from the site for up to three years after planting, if necessary. After that, the grove of trees is left to its own devices. Due to the dense planting, the seedlings grow quickly as they compete for sunlight.<\/p>\n