20.04.2023 | Pere Fraga. Mutualisms: Interactions With Benefits.
20 April 2023, 12:45 – 15:30 (CET) | ETH Zürich, Oerlikon, ONA E 7 Fokushalle
Pere Fraga i Arguimbau is a technical specialist in gardening and ornamental horticulture. In recent years, his main professional activity has been in the conservation of threatened flora in the framework of LIFE Natura projects, later in different biodiversity monitoring projects and in the field of teaching. Currently, he is a botanical conservator and head of research at the Marimurtra Botanical Garden.
You can't garden without knowing how plants relate to their environment. Gardening and landscaping are based on the cultivation of plants. These, like any other living being, must relate to the world around them, both the physical environment and other living things. Making a garden is, to a greater or lesser degree, imitating a landscape or a plant community. Even the most artificial and rational garden has an ecology without which plants will not grow satisfactorily. Knowing and understanding how plants relate to their environment is an essential point. Many plants depend on mutually beneficial relationships for proper development. Cultivation techniques can break mutual relationships, and sometimes what looks like a pathology can end up being a mutualism that is always beneficial to the plant. Applying ecology to the cultivation of garden plants, imitating natural systems to solve problems like pathologies, being aware of mutualisms and how they can be fostered, promoting synergies between plants - all help to make gardening more sustainable.
This lecture is organised by the Chair of Being Alive as part of the course Regenerative Practices for Exhausted Landscapes
