Wild Ivy Gorge: Designing Stewardship for a Mediterranean Water Sanctuary

Wild Ivy House sits beside a year-round stream and biodiversity-rich gorge connecting the Sierra María–Los Vélez Natural Park with the village of Vélez-Blanco. This water corridor supports birdlife, riparian vegetation, traditional acequias, agricultural terraces, and a rare ecological refuge within an otherwise semi-arid Mediterranean landscape. Despite receiving only around 400 mm of rainfall annually, the region contains springs, streams, and water habitats that play a vital role in sustaining biodiversity and local communities.

The stream forms a living connection between mountain ecology, public green spaces, and cultivated land. However, periodic stream-bank clearance operations can result in significant loss of vegetation cover and disturbance to soils and habitats. This project seeks to establish the ecological knowledge and stewardship framework needed to better understand, value, and care for this shared landscape.

Building on several years of community-led agroecology, water initiatives, citizen science activities, artistic engagement, and preliminary permaculture-based site assessment, we seek funding for a study and design residency. Through our local and Iberian regenerative networks, we will bring together water stewards, permaculture designers, agroecologists, and local residents to survey the ecology, document the social and ecological value of the site, deepen understanding of the habitat, and develop a long-term stewardship and regeneration roadmap.

Our goal is to make visible the ecological value of this unique landscape while strengthening collaboration between local communities, land stewards, and public institutions. Funding will support residencies, ecological and ethnographic field research, community engagement, educational materials, and the production of a practical stewardship strategy for the long-term care of this shared ecological resource.