First Newsletter of 2024

Dear friends,

The year 2023 has come to an end. We would like to express our gratitude to all those persons who have been supporting our projects, either as participants in our seminars, or as generous donors. In this last year, our ethnobotanical garden and agroforestry project underwent great change forward. The most impressive is the completion of a stone path and railing that goes from the main house down through Bea’s Tunnel (made of Diplopterys Cabrerana), down along Adrina’s Path to our main water source.

To the right of the path, a new garden section was created featuring Coleusand other plants of the Salvia genus.

The stone path with wooden railing continues up to Karen’s Hill, where we placed two 5,000-liter containers, from which we irrigate the plants below.

The path continues down to the river, along tertiary forest. A banister and stone steps in the steeper parts facilitates the access of people of all ages.

Adrina’s Path

One of our main projects in 2024 is the completion of the Deborah’s Cacti and Succulent House. The main frame of the house has already been built, but we still need to add a transparent roof to the house as well as glass walls. This is where we are going to keep our collection of cacti while keeping an area as a nursery for the most important new plants coming to Wasiwaska. We will bring river sand, provided by our own spring, to the area where our cacti are going to be, and we will install a solar panel and a container to gather rainwater for the dry periods.

The new Cacti house

The agroforestry project is now flourishing in an area that a few years ago was damaged by invasive pines and ferns.