2023: Feature in Lanzarote Gazette, and listed in the Top 5 Green Spaces to visit in Lanzarote.
2022: Vegetation is Possible with Native Plants (published article in Diario de Lanzarote) written by Saúl García. English translation of text below.
David Riebold demonstrates the beauty of local plants in the garden of his home in Haría and urges authorities to encourage their planting: they are beautiful and easy to grow. Why grow native plants? According to David Riebold, there are at least five reasons. First: they are easy to grow. They have evolved over millions of years to adapt to local conditions and tolerate the wind, heat, and aridity of Lanzarote better than most imported alternatives. The second reason: they are beautiful. “Planted in a garden, protected from goats, Lanzarote’s native plants can develop spectacularly, far beyond the stunted specimens found in nature, in the most spectacular forms.” Third and fourth: they have medicinal properties and are a source of potentially valuable genetic material. And fifth: they are the basis of a unique ecosystem: “Each plant species provides food and habitat for a variety of insects or birds.”
In the garden of his home in Haría, Riebold, a secondary school science teacher with a master’s degree in forestry and agroforestry from the University of North Wales, has been putting the five points explained on his website into practice for several decades, proving that vegetation in Lanzarote is no pipe dream. He calls it “The green heart of Haría.”
Riebold launched the Montaña Aganada reforestation project with fog meters and built his house using what remained of an old fish market. He planted the garden little by little, and in it you can see trees such as the Canary Island date palm, the wild olive tree, the mastic tree, and the dragon tree, and flowers such as the Aeonium lancerottense, two native species of the asparagus family; the Convolvulus lopezsocasi, representatives of the Asteriscus family; the Caralluma buchardii; species of lavender, limonium, sea rosemary, bindweed, and the Aeonium balsamiferum, with its yellow flower, considered a delicacy by goats. “A local expert told me I have more of these in my garden than in the rest of the world combined,” he says.
In recent years, the Island Water Board has sent workers on several occasions to destroy some of these plants, which are on the red list as endangered species, because their land was spilling over into the Tenesía Ravine, which was key to Riebold’s acquisition of the house, as it serves as a wildlife corridor. Riebold maintains that the island’s ravines are under-appreciated in this regard. He notes that he continues his “solitary obsession with the wonderful but endangered flora of this island” and fears that the same thing will happen again this year, or soon. He says that on one occasion, Board workers entered his garden while he was away, cut down a tamarisk tree, and threw the cuttings “into a valuable colony of protected red-listed plants.”
Over the years, he has written several letters or emails to successive mayors of Haría urging them to value the site, “instead of destroying it,” and to replace the “ubiquitous” money tree in the town with protected local species. “I planted some local plants many years ago; they flourished for a long time until someone noticed and replaced them with rubbish,” he says.
Vegetation in Lanzarote is not a pipe dream. He calls it “the green heart of Haría.” For Riebold, “the City Council seems unable to decide whether it wants to make any effort to protect the local flora or whether it wants to start planting native species in the areas it controls and encourage the land bordering our ravines to be filled with some of our rare plants.” And he also believes that the Water Council itself could become “proactive in promoting our local plants by encouraging their introduction or protection along our ravines.” He says the one between Haría and Arrieta would be particularly suitable for this.
“My garden is at its peak of attractiveness right now. There may be greener gardens, but I don’t think there’s one that isn’t watered and specializes in Canarian plants,” he says. “This wildlife garden demonstrates the possibilities that exist, especially in the north of the island, and that could exist elsewhere if the authorities wanted,” he notes. He believes that “local plants are tough, perfectly adapted to our conditions, and, when given minimal care, can look beautiful.” David delivers his surplus plants to the shop next door to his house as gifts for customers and says that “there is a steady uptake,” but believes that if the City Council took some initiative, “it would certainly create more interest.” “Appreciation of Lanzarote’s unique flora seems to have diminished in the three decades since I arrived,” he says, “but the issues persist, such as biodiversity, the state of our biosphere, and the importance of trees in combating climate change.”
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