Synergistic Garden: a film by Emilia Hazelip

Emilia Hazelip was a Catalan born organic gardener who pioneered the concept of synergistic gardening. The video on no-till synergistic gardening describes the step-by-step processes developed by Emilia Hazelip to create an ecological agriculture. She became interested in Fukuoka’s work in 1977 and this video shows the cultural and climatological adaptations she developed in the course of years of research.

A synergistic garden is an ecosystem that is consciously designed to allow all the dynamic life forms present in a wild soil to remain present while still growing crops (on whatever scale). It is that simple. But that’s not the view commonly held in the sphere of science or in the politics of agribusiness.

Emilia exclaims passionately: “The living world is not understood by the technician, and since it is not understood, it is not studied for its diversity. People always want to apply mechanical laws to it…”

The film is of course quite old now and you can see how dated it looks however the information contained within is timeless and can teach today as well as it could when it was first filmed – we hope you agree.