The urban garden as a place for interaction, creativity, and learning

Since 2006, the ECOS association has been using the urban garden as a space for exchange, creativity, and learning.

The garden serves as an educational tool, a true bridge for raising awareness and experiencing the diversity of the living world in everyday life.

The association’s initiatives blend agroecology with art in their ability to transform our perceptions of the environment.

The urban garden is at the heart of the association’s project. The garden as a complex space, inspiring wonder, fostering patience, observation, and an understanding of ecosystemic relationships, encouraging dialogue, and ultimately unleashing creativity and frugality.

The ECOS association is developing its activities within the framework of its community project, notably through:

• Boutur’âges: a sharing project centered on the garden:  a volunteer gardener who does not have access to a plot of land to cultivate comes to garden on a portion of an elderly person’s garden or on the grounds of a medical-social facility (nursing homes, senior residences, etc.);
• The Doulon Neighborhood Nursery: a resource center for fostering biodiversity in the city:  plant production, group orders (seeds, straw, hay, potting soil, compost, etc.), participatory projects, monthly courses in natural gardening, group visits, etc.

And, in addition, it supports public and private organizations in their greening projects:

• Community gardens: creation, management, and facilitation of community gardens with residents, primarily in priority neighborhoods;
• Hands-on workshops: activities to explore major environmental issues and potential local actions. Example: a walk to forage for wild plants followed by a cooking workshop to learn how to prepare them.