Permacultura Penyaflor is a hotspot of Permaculture activities and informal education near Tortosa in Catalunya. The space is founded by Cecile Thevenot and she invited a group of youth from Barcelona in 2019 to have a closer look to alternative living in the countryside.

Count by yourself: you can enjoy the illusion of a result once or you can enjoy every moment of the process.

Juan Petry

One of the informal educative activities was to build a shelter for young plants. The challenge was to use as much as possible organic material from the location (0km).

The workshop (2 days, each time 4 hours) ended with success. The youth where able to test the stability of their work.

… but it was not the end of the story…

To protect the young plants form too much sunlight we added a roof with canyas. This amazing invasive plant is growing everywhere around rivers and creeks in Spain and was since ancient time a useful material for construction. It is flexibel and easy to move and to handle.

We connected the canyas with nods in two lines and linked them sometimes to the wood construction below.

To protect the plants from direction south west we used palm leafs between canyas. 8 leafs where enough for 3 square meter of wall (an it took us 5 minutes to fix it).

To have space for heavy pots with water and plants we used old wood from pallets.

After 6 hours we where ready to move all plants into the new buildung.

Life is a process, and – for us – infinite. The session of the youth was a milestone to reach the goal of having a shelter for the young plants. Cecile, a wwoofer from France and Juan continued the work.

Our world is focused on results, but in a process driven world a final result is an illusion. This shelter will be never finished and it will need attention and care over the next years. But on the way to return to compost and food for new generations of humans this shelter will be useful for the purpose of having shadow for the young plants of Permacultura Penyaflor.