Miraposa Ascendente
Regenerative Gardens & Community Classroom
A butterfly rises at the Mariposa Ascendente Regenerative Agriculture Garden and Classroom at Arbol Farm.
Designed by program manager Elizabeth Agee, the Colorado Farm and Food Alliance's outdoor learning space, laid out as a butterfly, showcases regenerative agriculture principles for sensory engagement and to demonstrate various techniques and how they work together.
This community space supports our mission to educate about our region’s agriculture, lands and legacy, and to promote community leadership and engagement in support of food security, improved land health, prosperous farms and workers, and greater rural resilience.
Regenerative and permaculture demonstration gardens
Community learning and timberframe classroom space
Supporting nutritional security with integrated food-crops, skills-building and education, and by directing garden surplus into food-sharing programs
Thanks to Elizabeth Agee, Colorado Farm & Food Alliance and Earth Hop Designs, for the garden vision, design and schematic -and for guiding its re-emergence in the world with new wings and renewed purpose.
2024 Summer Update
In 2024 Elizabeth guided the re-build and re-emergence of our timber-frame outdoor classroom and learning gardens.
We installed a walkway with pavers from Delta Brick & Climate, some stamped with the name of early donors who supported this vision now laid out under an arbor, with young grape vines planted at the posts to grow into a shaded pathway.
With help from interns Lauren and Aberdash and support from Arbol Farm, Elizabeth began a mini-orchard, put in a large pollinator garden and built a berm and swale system to grow food-crops.
This includes a “three sisters garden,” demonstrating a time-honored technique developed by the region’s first agriculturalists thousands of years ago - combining maize, beans and squash.
Plans to increase food production on site in partnership with other organizations and volunteers are in store for 2025 and in 2024 we have been able to prepare boxes to provide into food-sharing programs.
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Pollinator plantings, Three Sisters Garden, berms and swales, alley-cropping, and other permaculture and regenerative agriculture practices are on display, and will be added to as a tool for teaching , hands-on learning, and providing sustenance to pollinators and people.
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The timber-frame outdoor classroom is at the center of the area we stewarding at Arbol Farm. But the entire space provides opportunity for community to come together and learn about growing and land practices that promote broad ecosystem benefits and can also boost on-farm and home garden production.
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We partner with other organizations and local food-sharing efforts to divert surplus produce from our gardens as well as from community-members, into area food pantries and nutrition programs.