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The urban garden in Ciempozuelos, Madrid, comes to life
23-02-2026
The 3C garden in Ciempozuelos, launched in August 2025 thanks to funding from Humana and the BBVA Foundation, in collaboration with the Ciempozuelos Town Council, is now fully operational and welcoming the first signs of spring.
The project in this Madrid municipality, part of the 3C urban agriculture programme, 3C Cultivemos el Clima y la Comunidad (3C Let's Cultivate the Climate and the Community), began at the end of the summer with a major challenge: to convert a disused and, to some extent, degraded plot of land into a community urban garden.
The work has been hard. To begin with, it was necessary to clear the land of waste and weeds. Then, the activists marked out the position of their growing beds, assembled the structures, mostly from recycled wood, and filled them with soil. Finally, they installed a drip irrigation system that will optimise water use, especially in the summer months.
‘The beginning was difficult because we found very compacted soil with debris that required great effort to clean up,’ explains José Antonio, one of the 22 activists working on the garden. ‘Setting up the beds also took a long time, as you might expect, but most of them are now in place and the garden is progressing at a good pace,’ he adds.
In addition, all the physical effort has been accompanied by a great deal of collaboration among the activists. Some have collected wooden pallets for their colleagues, others have lent tools for cutting and fixing the planks, and others have shared seeds in preparation for the approaching spring.
Now that the last of the winter cold and heavy rains have passed, the hard work is beginning to pay off with the sprouting of the first crops of the year, such as garlic, broad beans and radishes. ‘Now comes the most satisfying part, which is sowing our crops and watching them grow,’ says Maricarmen, another of the activists.
Community urban gardens such as the one in Ciempozuelos help to renaturalise urban spaces and create community, benefiting both the environment and the residents of the municipality.
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