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As the drive to make the city productive continues, patio and rooftop gardens are now being keenly promoted, especially in Centro, Havana Vieja and heavily populated areas of other municipalities.
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Santana's garden is an early example. His apartment is above a garage. In the mid 1980's he established a grapevine, planted in the alley beside the building, trained up onto his patio, it now forms a verandah roof at the back of the apartment, covers the apartment roof, and that of a neighbour. Sanatana has a licence to sell the wine he makes, and shares the excess grapes with his neighbours.
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With the onset of the Special Period he decided to set up a garden. From the garage below he got old tyres, and from the agro-market he fetched the end of the day sweepings, soil for the tyres, vegetable waste for the worm bin. Later the Urban Agriculture Department arranged the delivery of a load of topsoil and compost, which filled dozens of tyres.
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Huerto la Guanabana is a collective effort. Six men, all telecommunications workers, manual labourer, technician and department manager all represented, all residents of the neighbouring block of apartments. Guanábana is one of three collectively run patches in the location which, before the coming of urban agriculture, was covered with rubble, the left over area where another apartment block might have been built had things gone differently.
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The soil was very poor to begin with, tons of rubble have been removed. This was piled up down one side of the site, and is now covered in a rambling Brazilian passion fruit (Maracuya). Some top soil has been imported and much compost has been made. Two sides of the huerto are now lined with a mixture of fruit trees. The central third of the area is planted with bananas, part densely, and part wider spaced, interplanted with annual crops. Either side of the bananas are rows of vegetables and vegetable fruits like peppers and tomatoes. Garlic chives (ajo montaña) are a very popular herb.
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