Rebuilding Vale de Água's native tree nursery

From the 5th to the 8th of August 2023, wildfire swept through our valley near Odeceixe and São Teotónio. The entire land burned, no exception. We lost homes, our vegetable garden, every length of water pipe and tank across eleven hectares, and our young reforestation. Among the losses was our tree nursery: the heart of our reforestation work, and with it the native trees we had been raising to bring this valley back to forest.

Our humble nursery was the centerpiece of our regeneration efforts and got reduced to ashes, including the seed bank.

We did not stand still. A wildfire-recovery fundraiser brought 71 supporters behind us, and we put every contribution to work on the land. We mapped the whole valley for water and erosion, then moved earth: we cut swales on contour, shaped sediment ponds, and dug retention ponds and new lakes. The winter rains tested them and they held. The ponds caught the black fire-sediment before it could foul our waterways, the new lake filled completely and is already growing an ecosystem at the foot of the land, and broadcast seeding turned the valleys and the edges of every water body green. We restored the water grid so every structure has water again, buried all the pipes against future risk, and in spring we began planting trees. Our public campaign updates document each of these steps.

Before the wildfire, our land was lush and dense in vegetation.

The 2023 fire devastated the land beyond recognition.

Our first spring in 2024 already brought a lot of green back.

One of the new water retentions we build (before and after the first rains in 2023).

The same retention one year after we built it creating a new ecosystem and providing life support to all plants around it

The one piece still missing.

The land is fighting back where it can: cork oak, medronho and willow are resprouting from their roots. But most other species burned beyond saving, so a diverse forest will only return through trees we grow and plant ourselves. With limited funds we rightly put them where the emergency was most urgent, the earthwork that stops erosion and holds water, and rebuilding the nursery had to wait. That is the one part of our recovery still undone, and it is the part that multiplies all the rest. A nursery is where regeneration begins. Bought seedlings are expensive, often non-local, and poorly adapted to our dry Alentejo summers. Our own nursery lets us collect seed from the native and traditional species that already belong here, cork oak, holm oak, strawberry tree (medronheiro), carob, and other Mediterranean natives, and raise them in local soil, hardened to local conditions, at a fraction of the cost.

One step further.

Until now we have replanted with what we could salvage, propagate by hand, or buy in. With the nursery rebuilt, we move from recovering the land to producing the trees that keep regenerating it, year after year: stock for our own slopes, for the fire-resilient corridors and water-line plantings we are designing next, and to share with neighbours who lost as much as we did.

What this funding builds.

A shaded, fire-aware propagation area; benches and trays; locally sourced substrate and pots; a simple, water-wise irrigation line fed from our recovered water system; and a full season of seed collection and sowing of local native species, deliberately avoiding anything on the regional invasive list. Our goal for the first cycle is around 3,500 native seedlings. The greenhouse, benches, tank and tools are reusable, so every cycle after the first costs a fraction and our tree production keeps compounding.

Who we are.

Matagal is a community living and working at Vale de Água da Serra. We govern by consensus and live by permaculture's ethics: care for the planet, care for people, fair share. The nursery is also a classroom, where members, volunteers, visiting children, and the local community learn propagation, seed-saving, and what it takes to bring a burned landscape back to life with their own hands.

Why now.

We have proven, with this community's help, that this valley can come back. The nursery is the missing engine that turns recovery into lasting regeneration. Every euro grows trees already adapted to survive the next dry summer, and helps Vale de Água become a place that holds water, hosts wildlife, and meets fire with resilience instead of ash.