Support High Atlas community earthquake resilience

For three days in March, two gardeners weeded and cleaned the garden of Lalla Aouda Saadia, improving growing conditions for the newly planted aromatic and ornamental plants. The uninviting old cement garden benches were also painted, adding colour and vibrancy to the garden. These activities were supported through a grant from The Global Diversity Foundation, a show of continued support at this time of transition to make way for school authorities and students to carry on efforts to maintain their restored school garden on their own.

School gardens in other parts of Morroco are also undergoing varying types of facelifts. At Dar Taliba Ourika, a gardener toiled for nine days to work the the ground marked for an ethnobotanical garden. The soil at Dar Taliba is very fertile but infested with weeds, particularly Cynodon dactylon (Njem) which is unfavorable to the growth of plants. The only way to get rid of the weeds is by tilling the soil to get rid of the roots over several months. Work is still in progress, and is being carried out in collaboration with Dr. Alain Cuerrier of the Montreal Botanical Garden.

Realising the need to create attractive green spaces for their university students, officials from the Association Dar Chichaoua, an institution in Marrakech currently hosting 344 university students (all girls) from the city of Chichaoua, invited GDF to organise and oversee the construction of a small garden for the girls, a project funded by a group of Canadians. The revamped garden now features ten new metal benches, five citrus tress (bigaradiers) and a fountain in the middle of the garden.

It is truly a pleasure to report the completion of the third and final phase of the rehabilitation of the Lalla Aouda Saadia High School garden. Four gardeners worked in October and November on the garden, further enhancing the school’s central courtyard as a welcome green space for the high school girls.

The new metal benches were first covered with an antirust coat, followed by a soothing green paint that blends nicely with the garden environment. Duranta erecta shrubs were planted all around the edge of the garden and over time they will be pruned into a natural hedge. The plot earlier set out and reserved for a small aromatic plant garden is now filled with basil, geranium, iris, lavender, lemon verbena, marjoram, sage, santolina, thyme and wormwood. Various ornamental plants, including atriplex, bougainvillea, hibiscus, oleander, plumbago, roses, and pennisetum and stipa grasses are featured throughout the garden. The greenery is now well established, and will be maintained by an irrigation system that effectively reaches each and every plant.  We have left open spaces for small gardening projects, such as a demonstration plot of local fruits and vegetables, that can be carried out by the school’s environmental club and other groups.

GDF will continue to support the upkeep of the school garden over the coming months, giving administrative staff, teachers and students at Lalla Aouda Saadia time to establish an ongoing program to protect and expand this small but important green patch in Marrakech. We are positive that they will strive to upkeep the garden. As Charlotte Burrows, a GlobalGiving representative who visited the project and interviewed some of the girls wrote in a recent blog post, "The girls I spoke with were incredibly grateful they now have such a haven in which to read and relax, and the teachers I spoke with were thrilled that the girls no longer wander outside the school gates meeting boys…" In many ways, the garden now resembles the impressions that some of the students created at the very beginning of the project three years ago.

Now that our efforts at Lalla Aouda Saadia High School are winding down, we would like to give a sneak preview of our other Regreening the Medina projects. In this and future reports, we will provide glimpses of our efforts to develop other school gardens in the Marrakech medina and nearby rural areas. Let’s start with the Dar Taliba girl's boarding house in Ourika, in the foothills of the High Atlas mountains. As part of our Educate 1300 Girls by Restoring Marrakech Gardens project, we are supporting the development of gardens and an herbarium of useful plants collected by the girls from Amazigh villages who board here, serving as a platform to educate the students on traditional ethnobotanical knowledge and practice. Stay tuned!

Links:

• Charlotte's blog post on her visit to Lalla Aouda Saadia