7d • Family Permaculture
Gardens Between the Canals
South of present-day Mexico City, a network of narrow fields and canals once spread across part of the shallow lake landscape. These cultivated fields are known as chinampas.
They are sometimes described as floating gardens, but that phrase can leave the wrong picture. Chinampas were generally raised growing areas constructed Aztecs to survive within shallow wetlands and were separated by canals and ditches. Many were bordered by native ahuejote willows that helped define and support their edges.
The canals were not separate from the garden. They influenced irrigation, access, soil building, and the transport of people and materials. The cultivated plots, canal water, wetland plants, trees, labor, and surrounding communities formed one connected ecosystem.
Archaeological work in the northern Basin of Mexico shows that raised-field agriculture existed before the later Mexica imperial period. At Xaltocan, an extensive system was developed and later abandoned as political, economic, and ecological conditions changed. Chinampas therefore should not be reduced to one invention created by one people at one moment.
The surviving chinampa landscape of Xochimilco remains internationally recognized. Its canals and cultivated fields preserve part of a living agricultural tradition, although urban growth, changing water conditions, pollution, and declining cultivation have placed increasing pressure on it.
The lesson is not that every garden should imitate a chinampa. The lasting principle is that good design begins by understanding what a place offers and what it requires. Water, soil, roots, access, labor, culture, and maintenance were not treated as separate questions. They had to fit together.
We can explore that idea by observing how water moves through our own neighborhood, comparing older regional growing practices, sketching the relationships around one garden bed, or learning how local cultures adapted food production to their particular soils and waters.
With an increase of drought and water shortage in many places around the world, is there something to learn here. We discuss adding organic matter to build a sponge to hold water in our gardens, although are our ponds just evaporating away without the same protection we promote on land?
Which chinampa relationship stands out most to you?
Water moving around the growing areas
Soil and organic materials building the fields
Trees supporting the field edges
Canals providing access and movement
The labor needed to maintain the landscape
The tradition continuing through cultural knowledge
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Gardens Between the Canals
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