67 The experimental areas Amadeco Farm is a masseria featuring areas demarcated by dry-stone walls, a charming testament to Salento's cultural heritage. We used these existing divisions to separate designs with diverse purposes and scalable to different sizes. Close to the main building lie two models adaptable to smaller projects: our Giardino Sintropico and Orto Sintropico. Both support a rich variety of plants, from seasonal vegetables and perennial shrubs to fruit and forest trees. While the first one is focused on creating a multifunctional garden, the second prioritizes horticultural production. Seen from above, the two areas have a distinct appearance. The organization of plant consortia in circular nests gives the Giardino winding paths. This design offers not only aesthetic and interactive appeal, but also resilience in water management, making it suitable for water-restricted areas, both rural and urban. Low irrigation dependence is a hallmark of all our designs, but it's particularly noteworthy in the Orto Sintropico, as vegetables typically require significant water. The innovation here lies in maintaining perennial beds where vegetables, rotated seasonally, are intercropped with aromatic species. Additionally, living irrigation lines composed of regularly pruned succulent plants provide further support. As with many rural properties in the region, Amadeco had two olive groves planted at the traditional spacing of 10 x 10 meters and 12 x 12 meters. In one of these areas, we opted to respect this tradition, while enhancing it with a wider variety of fruit trees. This became our Frutteto Sintropico. Each olive tree is accompanied by three fruit tree species: one emergent and two from a lower stratum, ensuring proper stratification within the tree line. The other pre-existing olive grove, we are transforming into our Uliveto Sintropico. There, the implemented design was suggested by Ernst Götsch with the intention of presenting an alternative to the controversial intensive and super-intensive olive tree plantations. The innovation of this scheme lies in its ability to balance the planting density typical of intensive monocultures (addressing the economic pressures often used to justify such practices), while preserving all the ecological functions essential to a Syntropic system. Here, the olive tree line will be managed as a hedgerow where olive trees occupy 50% of the upper stratum. Between these olive hedgerows, we've added a new line of other fruit trees like figs, citrus, avocados, pecans, stone fruits, and a wide variety of Mediterranean shrubs. Additionally, in the strips between the tree lines, we're conducting trials with seed mixtures designed to create a summer-green herbaceous layer. Once established, these strips will be ready to be integrated with no-till and noherbicide grain production. Both the Frutteto and Uliveto have designs that allow for the use of low-impact machinery for maintenance and harvesting.
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