Blog: Marimurtra alive

The traditional garden varieties

varietats hortícoles marimurtra

Tomato plants, bean plants, artichoke plants, pepper plants, pumpkin plants, cabbages, lettuces, carrots… since humans began to grow plants for consumption, seeds and cuttings were the object of exchange or sale with which the different cultures have been integrating their products into their diet. In this way, nowadays wheat is cultivated, originally from the Middle East; aubergines, from northern India; citrus fruits, from the tropical and subtropical areas of Asia or potatoes, from South America.

With each new planting, the farmer selected the largest and best fruits and the plants most resistant to pests, inclement weather or those most adapted to the types of sun. In this way, year after year there has been a selection of the seeds destined for the plantations for the following season and without realizing it, we have carried out an artificial selection. So, in each area of the territory, people cultivate local varieties of tomatoes, beans or melons, the result of the history of the domestication of vegetables. These traditional varieties stand out for their taste, the great variety of colors or shapes, and sometimes also for the specific uses of some of their fruits.

The extension of agriculture and the use of monocultures break a little with this mosaic of local varieties, where seeds are often bought from large companies that distribute simultaneously to many countries. This uniformity of cultivated species presents a lower adaptability to the territory, and many times it is necessary for the farmer to use chemical products in order to eradicate pests or promote the development of plants. In this way, more and more, many of the varieties of all life are harder to find or, in some cases, end up being lost. The presence of these varieties in the market has also managed to revalue some of these plants, such as Santa Pau beans, crochet beans, Berguedà black peas, bull’s heart tomatoes or Montserrat tomatoes or calabash squash of angel, among many others. We must also think that these vegetables, fruits and vegetables are part of our plant, cultural and historical heritage.

The Jardí Botànic Marimurtra carries out activities and objectives of conservation and dissemination of the flora of the territory, ensuring that a large part of the wild and horticultural flora of Catalonia can be preserved. This year we have sown a wide variety of traditional horticultural species of pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers, corn, courgettes, lettuce… coming from the Vallès Oriental Seed Bank, the Les Refardes association or other farmers. You will be able to find many of these specimens in the garden area of the garden or distributed in different places throughout the visit.

See all the horticultural variety files:

The Carl Faust Foundation launches the museological project of the 50 most remarkable specimens from the Marimurtra Botanical Garden collection

On the occasion of the International Day of Botanical Gardens (second Friday of October), the Carl Faust Foundation presents the Costa Brava Botanical Museum project, a tour of the collection of the 50 most outstanding specimens of Marimurtra that you can now enjoy through labels with QR codes distributed along the route through the Botanical Garden, which provide detailed and descriptive information on each of the specimens in the collection.

According to ICOM (the international organization that regulates museums), all botanical gardens are also considered museums. In the case of Marimurtra, in addition, the relevant arrangements will be made before the Generalitat de Catalunya to enter the register managed by the Catalan Government. The Carl Faust Foundation, manager of the Marimurtra Botanical Garden, has opted for a museum operation that is adapted to new technologies and that at the same time offers a simple operation for the user. Each of the 50 remarkable specimens in the collection is identified by a QR with the species name. When the visitor scans the QR, they access a species file where they can consult the description of the plant, what the Marimurtra specimen looks like, some curiosities about the species, some of its main uses and some botanical classifications.

Apart from the QRs, a map has also been placed at the entrance to the Garden explaining how the Museum works and the location of these 50 specimens. On the museum website marimurtra.cat/museu, there is also a welcome video where the project is presented and a short tutorial on how to use the QR codes and how to follow the museum’s route inside the Garden.

This project aims to bring science and botany closer to visitors to Marimurtra, as well as achieve an impact and learning after their visit. Apart from being a Botanical Garden with captivating views, Marimurtra is also a center for research, dissemination and conservation of the biodiversity of species.

The Marimurtra Botanical Garden was created during the 1920s by the German businessman and philanthropist Carl Faust with the intention of being a center for research, study and conservation of botanical specimens of great interest to the scientific community. His legacy lives on today through the Carl Faust Foundation, which ensures that the Botanical Garden is kept in perfect condition for visitors and also takes Faust’s will to turn it into a space dedicated to plant conservation, study of Mediterranean biology and dissemination of scientific and environmental values.

The Marimurtra Botanical Garden is classified as a Cultural Asset of National Interest and in 2009 the Carl Faust Private Carl Foundation was awarded the Sant Jordi Cross from the Generalitat de Catalunya.

Get to know the story of the gardener Enric Omella with the Marimurtra Botanical Garden

Enric Omella, master gardener, tells us about his experience during his stay at the Marimurtra Botanical Garden in 1975.

He started in the world of gardening from a biology and geology teacher he had in high school at that time. The way the classes were taught made him motivated to study. To such an extent, at the age of sixteen, that he went to the library of the University of Barcelona to continue researching and learning about botany.

In this conversation with Jordi Fàbregas, head of the Marimurtra garden, he comments on the differences and tasks that are still valid today for the organization of the garden. The way of sorting and delimiting the plants by zones that can be found there, based on tiles, stands out. They are ordered alphabetically or by common characteristics.

He also explains his experience or collaboration between gardens where he was able to be a gardener, such as: Miramar, Cap Roig or Pinya de Rosa.

Marimurtra Botanical Garden, the protagonist of an episode of the second season of Healing gardens, a Canadian documentary series about gardens around the world

Healing Gardens is a documentary series from Vision TV, (Zoomer Television) a Canadian network, which explores the transformative capabilities of gardens. The fifth episode of this season was recorded during the spring of this year at the Marimurtra Botanical Garden.

In the episode, Charlie Dobbin, the host of the show, interviews different people who interact with Marimurtra to learn about their relationship with the Garden and how they fall in love with it.

First of all, he talks to expert ornithologist and environmental consultant Pere Alzina, who explains his task of inventorying and studying the birds that fly over Marimurtra.

The director general of the Carl Faust Private Foundation, Josep Borrell, is also interviewed. The founder of the Garden, Carl Faust, created the Foundation to ensure the continuity of his work and, in the documentary, Borrell explains how the botanical management is in this privileged place and some of the main projects of the Garden, projects that promote the dissemination, conservation and research of botany.

Anna Sans, head of the Dissemination Department of the Carl Faust Foundation, explains how the Garden is conceived as an ecosystem in which not only plant species interact, but there is a large network of relationships between insects, birds, mammals, plants , etc.; and how important it is to take care of all these relationships.

The botanist’s master gardener, Jordi Fàbregas, talks about the distribution of the Garden and how they conceive their maintenance task for the more than 4,000 species from all over the world that live together in Marimurtra.

Finally, you can enjoy some short clips with extra content on the website of the documentary, among which there is an interview with Christopher Witty, one of the members of the board of trustees of the Carl Faust Foundation, who has a great passion for nature and, he affirms, that “he often understands plants better than humans”.

The documentary can be viewed here: https://healinggardens.tv/season2

The Carl Faust Private Foundation was created in 1951 by Carl Faust. Among its founding objectives are “…the protection and promotion of studies in Mediterranean biology, especially in botany, […] seeking cooperation and international relations for the benefit, all in all, of scientific research and dissemination…” .

The Marimurtra Botanical Garden is classified as a Cultural Asset of National Interest and in 2009 the Carl Faust Private Carl Foundation was awarded the Sant Jordi Cross from the Generalitat de Catalunya.

Marimurtra welcomes Mia and Louisa, volunteers of the ESC European program

On October 1st, 2023, Mia and Louisa arrived in Blanes to join the Marimurtra team. They are the two German volunteers who are part of the “Volunteers for a Green Future” project, coordinated together with the German organization Naturkultur, e.V. and framed in the European program “European Solidarity Corps”.

The Carl Faust Private Foundation, host organization for this project, owner and manager of the Marimurtra Botanical Garden, welcomes two volunteers from the European Solidarity Corps from October until June. This European program aims to offer young people the opportunity to participate in volunteering projects that benefit the community that hosts them, as well as providing them with high-level non-formal learning. Specifically, this project lasts nine months and receives more than 90 requests each year.

During their stay, the volunteers participate in activities at the Botanical Garden related to sustainable conservation, education and scientific dissemination and the applied research that is carried out in Marimurtra. In addition, thanks to the collaboration with the Linguistic Standardization Consortium (CNL), the volunteers will participate in a basic level Catalan course to facilitate their integration in our home.

This is the fifth time that Marimurtra has participated in the ESC program by hosting volunteers, since it received the European quality seal in 2019, thus continuing the presence of international volunteers in its facilities in a program linked to the European Union which we can already consider consolidated.

voluntaries marimurtra esc
MLouisa (on the left) and Mia (on the right) in the pergola of the Marimurtra Botanical Garden

 

50th anniversary of the Manifesto ‘Catalan, language of scientific expression’

On August 20th, the event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Manifesto ‘Catalan, language of scientific expression’ took place in Prada de Conflent, in which Josep Maria Camarasa, member of the board of trustees of the Fundació Carl Faust, manager of the Marimurtra Botanical Garden.

Josep Maria Camarasa is one of the four surviving speakers of the eleven who presented the manifesto 50 years ago.

In 1973, the manifesto on the use of Catalan in scientific communication was presented, drawn up by 11 speakers of different ages and specialties who represented the different generations of Catalan scientists active at the time.

Although the manifesto was presented at the beginning of the decade of the 70s, it is contextualized in the era of ‘sixties’, which as well transcribed by Camarasa “It was a plural movement and of great vitality, which manifested itself as the expression of a very fierce collective will in which two objectives converged: the rejection of Francoism and the affirmation of culture (and language) as a defining form of Catalan identity”.

The presentation of this Manifesto was a belated manifestation of all the movements and actions that took place during the ‘sixties’: resumption of the science branches of the IEC, launch of the Great Catalan Encyclopedia with considerable attention to the topics scientists, incorporation of valuable scientists such as Enric Casassas, Ramon Margalef or Antoni Prevosti into the UB and the nascent UAB, first participation in Antarctic expeditions by Catalan scientists such as Antoni Ballester or Josefina Castellví, scientific vocabularies such as the Electronic Dictionary of Lluis Marquet (1971) or the Vocabulary of Medicine (1974) of the Academy of Medical Sciences, among other milestones.

On August 25, 1973, Oriol Casassas and Ramon Folch presented in the gymnasium of the Liceu Renouvier de Prada, in front of 300 people, the initial document they had drafted, which was approved, with some amendments, in the following weeks it was signed by numerous scientists from the Catalan Countries and was presented to the Institute of Catalan Studies.

The manifesto claims the use of the Catalan language in all areas but specifically in the scientific community and establishes different criteria for scientific publications with very solid arguments that take into account the history and use of the language.

A document that has become extremely important for the consolidation and regularization of the Catalan language in all its areas, but above all in the field of science.

The recorded memorial service can be viewed at this link.

50è aniversari del Manifest El català, llengua d'expressió científica

Amira Benali | Biotechnology Internship in Marimurtra

Every year the Carl Faust Foundation welcomes different internship students to the Marimurtra Botanical Garden who carry out the practical learning part of their studies.

In this case, Amira Benali, student of the Degree in Biotechnology at the University of Girona, explains to us what her internship at the Garden has consisted of.

Basically, he has been working with plant extracts. In the Marimurtra Botanical Garden, no chemical products have been used to carry out treatments for 6 years. Instead, plant extracts are used. As Amira says ‘…healing plants from plants‘.

During her stay, Amira has been able to observe in the short term the effects and changes in the horticultural species on which the treatments have been applied, in order to see in which cases their application benefited the plant. In addition, the species with which the Marimurtra Botanical Garden makes the extracts, nettle, horsetail, bora and solan, are grown in the same garden.

Experience of Anaïs Dupuy’s landscaping practices

Anaïs Dupuy has taken a 2-month internship from her studies at the National School of Architecture and Landscape Design in Bordeaux to become a landscape designer.

During his stay he has carried out maintenance and conservation tasks for the Garden and has also developed the project to consolidate the ethnobotanical area and create a rockery in the second Garden.

To carry out this project, Anaïs had to document herself looking for information about the area of ​​ethnobotany and thus be able to have a good base on which to work. This has required a lot of preparatory field work, taking measures to be able to have sketches to scale to know very well all the corners of the space.

He has made several realistic and aesthetic plans of how the area of ​​ethnobotany is today, painted with watercolors, and in which you can observe his artistic talent, as well as other plans, which reflect a future proposal of how it could stay in this area after implementing the actions proposed in the project. He has also presented sketches in a more technical and precise format, made with a computer.

The composition of the elements and species of the project has a sense of being, and a justification both botanical and landscape. Anaïs has taken into account different factors when distributing the elements in the space such as the alternation of different densities of the vegetation in the area, which is a space accessible by sight, and the maintenance of a global coherence of the entire space.

His exhaustive work has increased and encouraged the development of this project which has acquired a very creative and interesting character. Anaïs’ move to Marimurtra has been a pleasure for the whole team.

If you are interested in an internship at the Marimurtra Botanical Garden, you can find more information at marimurtra.cat/estudiants

La Fundació Carl Faust estudia mesures de millora de gestió energètica i consum gràcies a un Cupó de Competitivitat

La FUNDACIO CARL FAUST ha desenvolupat el projecte “Anàlisi i viabilitat de l’aplicació de la IA en els processos operatius” que ha estat subvencionat amb el suport d’ACCIÓ en el marc del programa Cupons de Competitivitat: Cupons de Canvi Climàtic.

El projecte ha consistit en apropar el Jardí Botànic Marimurtra, propietat i gestionat per la Fundació, a uns estàndards basats en els edificis de consum quasi nul (nZEB) o a l‘acreditació LEED o BREEAM, potenciant les hibridacions d’energies renovables i economia circular per un aprofitament dels potencials disponibles segons la zona climàtica i tipologia d’edificació.

Fundació Carl Faust