Why We're Building Large Ponds on a Mountainside?

For decades, this slope was covered by a dense monoculture of mimosas. It was a major fire hazard and prevented native species from becoming established. But now, this place is changing. Before we can plant a Mediterranean garden, before people can work here surrounded by nature, and before wildlife can find refuge in the ponds we create, we need to first rebuild the landscape itself. But turning a degraded monoculture into a living garden isn't as simple as removing what was here before. Because the real challenge is this. How do you design a place that serves people, retains water, supports biodiversity, and helps reconnect an abandoned village with the forest around it? Welcome to Silvera Tech. We are regenerating 230 hectares of mountain landscape through reforestation, agroforestry, water management, and much more. We are working to turn this degraded land into a resilient ecosystem. After our post-fire recovery work, which included drone seeding and fencing off our young agroforest, we can finally start a new project, the co-working garden. The garden will be located right next to the co-working space, just below our current base camp. In the past, this slope was covered by a dense mimosa monoculture. Last year, we cleared it to create a firebreak. Fortunately, we did it just in time. Only a few months later, a wildfire swept through our land and a firebreak helped protect our base camp. Now, it's time to give this slope a new purpose and bring it back to life. What are you doing? Or planning? We are planning the next implementations. Design-wise? Design-wise. Yeah, we're not planning the implementation itself. We're planning the planning, the design of the planning. So, we're planning the planning of the planning plans. Designing the plans so we can plan the design. So, we can plan the design. And then you have a meeting about how to plan plans to design. Yeah, but that's later on. Before that, we have to design the plans so we know where the plans will be designed. Have you submitted the form to plan the plans? Not yet. Oh, so you need to submit the form. We need to plan the submission then. We need to plan the waterways, the roads, the platforms. Yeah. So, we have the design, we thought about it here in the GPS. And now, we're going around and making sure that what we are designing makes sense in the landscape. Because what you do in the PC is completely different from reality. This is the post office. This is our post office. Where do you work? Right here. Right here? Right there. What are the flags marking? So, these flags are marking what we call pocket terraces, a level platform. The platforms will be essential to the future garden. They will create shaded places where people can sit, meet, work and rest. At the heart of the garden, a cascade of ponds will step down the slope. Around them, a riparian zone. The lush ecosystem that grows naturally along the water's edge will cool the air, increase humidity, filter the water, stabilise the soil and act as a firebreak during dry summers. A refuge for wildlife, a retreat for people. The design is locked in. Let's get to work on those slopes. Very exciting. What's the plan for the next days? So, right now we're going to prepare the terrain. We have a lot of dead trees from the fire. We have a lot of... Stumps. From the trees. So, we're going to take everything out, prepare everything, make sure there's no obstacles so that then we have space to work on and start making the paths and the small platforms and all of that. Once the terraces are prepared, we can start working on the ponds. We're making these small sort of shelves so that we can like place the rocks and create the sort of natural path of the water. Like pond and stream. Yeah, it's going to be like ponds with a little stream that is connecting all of them. Getting shaped. Yes. We're finishing up the last ponds. Now it's going to come one of the hardest parts. We're going to have to take all the rock out. We're going to put some good dirt that we have already there that we preserved before we're doing all of this. We're going to spread it around. We're also going to get some rock dust. We're going to spread it around to make sure that there's no... It's just like smooth everywhere because we need to protect the liner, the EPDM, which is the improvised sort of liner. Yeah, improvised liner. And it's a very fragile, so we need to protect it. So that's why we're trying to take out all the rocks because they are very sharp. We want to put some rock dust, some good dirt. And then it's the phase of putting the geotextile and the liner. While Mimmo and Clegg are taking out the rocks and we're smoothing this out, Paolo is going to take the big digger and he's going to go to a place here in our land and he's going to take some rocks. He's going to use the ripper and break some rocks so that we can have big boulders so that then we can place on the ponds and make it really nice. That's why we created a platform so that we can start building up all the rocks that we want. While Paolo gathers the boulders, a load of rock dust arrives, allowing our team to start filling the ponds with it. We want these surfaces as smooth as humanly possible. We're going to have to compact all of this, water it, compact all of this. And after compacting, still look for small stones that could damage the liner, remove them, and then probably compact again. As summer approaches and working in full sun just becomes unbearable, our team switches to a new schedule. To make the most of the cooler hours, we now start work at 5 a.m. Morning. Morning, João. How is it going? It's the second day getting up at 5, right? Yeah, the hardest part is just readjusting sleeping rhythms. Other than that, it's much better to start work at this hour. It's worth getting up this early just for the view. Reforesting 230 hectares of mountain is no small task. It takes serious effort and serious funding. We could chase corporate sponsors. Instead, we're building something more resilient, a community. When our funding comes from people who believe in this project, we stay independent, free to make bold decisions for the land, the wildlife, and the people here. That's what Patreon does for us. Join the community that's making it possible. Link in the description. Now, let's get to work. The geotextile has arrived. So, exciting day. Today we're putting the first liner on the first lake. So here we are already putting the geotextile, which is the first layer. Then we're gonna put the liner, which we already cut to the measure of the lake. And then we put another layer of geotextile. Then we protect the liner very well from rocks. And the rocks that are below and the rocks that I'm gonna put on top of that. Now we can finally position the boulders that Paolo and Pedro brought in. Okay, we're here in the middle of the day. The process is going good. We already put eight rocks, big ones. So we're starting with the big ones. It's a bit of a tedious work because we need to be very detailed, very surgical, one by one. So we put each rock on the strap and we take it one by one carefully. And then we place it, understanding which place we want it to shell well. Yeah, making sure that everything sits perfectly in the lake. It's already looking promising. We need to place the remaining boulders before we can fill the bottom of the ponds with river rocks. Pedro now is putting the small, big rocks and I'm collecting some a bit smaller rocks. Not very, very small, but yeah, small enough. And I'm putting between the gaps of the big rocks. So yeah, basically we are using this to fill the gaps only after we put the river rocks. Finally, the river rocks arrived. We now have everything for the first stage. Just a few final touches. And the first pond is almost finished. It already looks beautiful. Just imagine water flowing through it, plants growing along the edges, a wildlife finding refuge here. The ponds won't just be beautiful to look at. Together with the surrounding riparian zone, they'll cool the air, filter the water, stabilise the soil and create a haven for salamanders, dragonflies and birds, while offering people a shaded place to pause. Before we can even dream of having water here, there's still a lot of work ahead. We'll be documenting the entire process of building our co-working garden here on our YouTube channel. This project only happens because of our patrons. Thank you for making it real. And if you want to help, join the crew on Patreon. Link in the description. Take care and I'll see you in the next episode.