Ejercicios de comprensión lectora: un huerto comunitario

When Mariam Okafor moved into her apartment block three years ago, the roof was a grey, empty space that nobody used. Today it is home to forty wooden boxes full of vegetables, herbs and flowers, and it has become the most popular place in the building.

The idea started almost by accident. Mariam, a retired science teacher, was growing tomatoes on her small balcony when a neighbour asked for advice. "Soon three or four people were knocking on my door every week," she remembers. "I thought, why don't we do this together, in a place with more sun?"

Getting permission was the hardest part. The building's owners were worried about the weight of the soil and about people falling. It took eight months of meetings, and an engineer's report, before they finally said yes. The residents paid for the boxes themselves, and a local hardware shop gave them the tools for free.

Now around sixty people take part, from a six-year-old boy who looks after the strawberries to an eighty-five-year-old man who grew up on a farm and teaches everyone how to plant beans. Every Saturday morning there is a short meeting to decide who will water the plants during the week.

For Mariam, the vegetables are not the most important thing. "Before the garden, people just said hello in the lift," she explains. "Now they have dinner together. Last summer we had a party up here with food we had grown ourselves. That was the moment I knew it had worked."