A garden without synthetic chemicals

For the past 9 years, the Marimurtra Botanical Garden has maintained a strong commitment to biodiversity and sustainability. For this reason, in 2016, the decision was made to stop using synthetic chemical products to treat plants or potential pests, in order to manage the Garden in a more sustainable way.

These products, such as fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides, contain substances that negatively affect organisms and the environment. Numerous ecotoxicological studies link the increased incidence of serious human diseases to exposure to chemical pesticides. Additionally, there is extensive scientific evidence indicating that the widespread use of these products is a significant source of pollution, affecting all environmental compartments of the Earth and the overall health of ecosystems.

In fact, pesticide and herbicide pollution promotes the loss of biodiversity across Europe, particularly impacting insect populations, which have experienced a severe decline in recent decades. This threatens the essential role these insects play in food production and other ecosystem services they provide, such as pollination and natural pest control.

Furthermore, these toxic products alter the properties of the soil, weaken the microbiota, and reduce its fertility, which can affect plant roots and encourage the emergence of pests and diseases. Finally, the excessive and frequent use of these products can contribute to increased pest resistance.

With this new perspective, the main goal of the Marimurtra Botanical Garden is to conserve the more than 4,000 taxa from around the world planted in the garden as efficiently and sustainably as possible, prioritizing human health and well-being, as well as that of the environment.

To achieve this, the following actions are taken to find ecological and sustainable alternatives to synthetic chemical products while promoting local biodiversity.