El Pilar Forest Garden Network

About the Forest Garden Network

The ancient Maya lifestyle was that of the Forest Gardener, which has unraveled over the last 500 years. We are trying to weave the tapestry of the gardeners and their knowledge back together through the El Pilar Forest Garden Network.

History

The Network emerged in 2004 to join local farmers in Belize and Guatemala together and spread the concept of forest gardening, one that reaches back to their heritage and the ancient Maya. These farmers live in the surrounding area of El Pilar, an ancient Maya center that straddles the Belize-Guatemala border. Drawing on their ancestral knowledge of plants in the Maya forest, these gardeners and farmers are helping each other to keep their traditions alive, discovering new uses for the biological diversity contained in the forest, and providing economic incentive for conserving the tropical forest.

Goals

To create a network of forest gardeners, helping to promote sustainable livelihoods
To keep the knowledge of plants within the community and to ensure that traditions and cultures are passed on
To create an easily accessible website and database for forest gardeners to share information about useful plant propagation, care, and use in addition to their meetings
To be a repository / resource of information for future forest gardeners
To inform the global community of the important conservation work of the forest gardeners in the Maya forest
To start a network of possible economic expansion of Maya forest products beyond the local markets
To sustain the heritage of the Maya while conserving the tropical forest

Implementation

Today there is a Network of several dozen forest gardeners in Belize and Guatemala. The gardeners meet intermittently to collaborate and share their techniques with each other. Meetings take place at the Be Pukte Cultural Center in Bullet Tree Falls, Cayo District, Belize as well as in the field at forest gardens in Belize and Guatemala. Nurseries are being set up to propagate plants useful to the farmers with the support of Help for Progress, a non-government organization in Belize (Help for Progress ).

A group of aspiring environmentalists nicknamed the “Enlaces” or “links” (in Spanish) are helping to bridge the generation gap between older Maya farmers and a new generation of potential forest gardeners. They are conducting interviews, collecting data on trees in each forest garden and mapping each garden using a handheld GPS system, with the support of BRASS/El Pilar (www.marc.ucsb.edu).