AWA Garden

We have had an organic vegetable garden based on regenerative and permanent agriculture since 2017.

The garden project began with the need to supply our kitchen with the freshest products and our desire to encourage small-scale agriculture here in the Lake Region.

The garden was designed with a distribution plan aimed to enable it to work under the same structure for 100–200 years or more. Every element in the design plays a role in this permanence.

The fruit trees, shrubs, and native trees have multiple functions, such as providing food, wind blocks, and an ecosystem for beneficial insects.

The bio-intensive garden has permanent beds that are increasingly fertile every year and where we grow the fruits and vegetables we use in the kitchen. We hope that in the near future they will produce enough to be available to the community as well.

IN FIGURES

% OF OUR PRODUCE

Our AWA Garden currently supplies 50% of the products used in our kitchen.

OUR CHICKENS

Our chicken coops have a movable fence that allows the chickens to eat fresh grass and scratch the ground, which makes them very happy!

Their manure (guano) is an excellent nitrogen-rich fertilizer that we use in our AWA garden.

OUR VEGETABLES

We grow approximately 40 different types of vegetables in addition to flowers and aromatic herbs, because a bio-diverse system is much healthier.

Growing a wide variety of plants together has many benefits for the garden, such as lowering the incidence of pest infestations.

% REUSE OF OUR ORGANIC WASTE

We compost the kitchen’s organic waste as well as trimmings from pruning.

This natural fertilizer is essential for maintaining healthy and aerated soils rich in organic matter.

% OF THE AIR

is polluted by conventional agricultural contaminants.

16% comes from mineral fertilizers, and 18% from biomass fuels and crop residues.

Conventional agriculture is the primary source of water pollution due to nitrates, phosphates, and insecticides.

Largest anthropogenic source of gases responsible for the greenhouse effect (source: FAO).

% OF HUMAN-GENERATED GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS

Soils can store 10% of the emissions generated by humans. They are able to absorb large amounts of CO², and therefore it is essential to have soils that are rich in organic matter, not compacted, and full of microbial life.