Arroios opens 12 of its 44 flowerbeds to resident gardeners
Lisbon’s Arroios parish is testing whether residents will tend small public green spaces, starting with 12 sites. It’s also where Cultiva, the organic garden the army cleared from a Graça school in September, plans to start again.
Since 1 October, anyone over 18 who lives, works, studies or is registered to vote in Arroios can ask to look after a flowerbed, a tree pit or a small green space near them. The parish council, the junta de freguesia, has mapped 44 of these spots on a dedicated website. Adoption is free and lasts a year, and it can be renewed if the junta is happy with how the space has been looked after. Chemical pesticides, herbicides and invasive species aren’t allowed.
Only 12 sites have opened so far, and they’re all under review now. The other 32 are marked “coming soon”. Manuel Banza, of the junta president’s office, told us in writing that this first round is a pilot. Applicants who picked a site and attend a first welcome session can adopt it after a site visit. Later rounds will go through the scored competition set out in the rules, in which 55 of 100 points go to what the garden does for the neighbourhood. “We want to consolidate this process first and see how it works on the ground before extending the programme to new spaces,” he wrote. Some applicants already tend a patch on their own and want to make it official.
The junta has eight staff for all its public-space work, Banza said. An outside company maintains most of its gardens. Adopters get technical advice, plants where a site needs them, water from a public tap where there is one, and a compost bin when the junta can provide one. The rules started from work by Lisbon gardener Nuno Prates and borrow from the regulation that Alvalade parish adopted in 2021.
For community vegetable gardens, the junta has picked out larger plots on Rua do Bombarda and near Largo de Santa Bárbara, but it needs Lisbon City Council’s permission and doesn’t have it yet.
Arroios is also set to take in a garden that lost its plot. Cultiva, run by the cooperative Rizoma, grew certified organic vegetables behind the Gil Vicente school in Graça from 2024 and sold them through Rizoma’s grocery in Anjos. The army wanted the plot for a building site. It was cleared on 12 September, despite a petition that Rizoma says drew more than 3,300 signatures. By the cooperative’s own count, the garden produced more than 3,000 kg of vegetables, in 42 varieties, from 250 m² of beds.
If you live, work or study in Arroios and want a site in a later round, you can write to the junta at geral@jfarroios.pt, which says it’s already had emails from interested residents. Rizoma’s agriculture section takes messages at agricola@rizomacoop.pt. The cooperative also welcomes new members. It says Cultiva will start again at the Escola Secundária de Camões, in Arroios.
