Creating a project connected to the place where it is developed, capable of generating positive impacts on its surroundings, implies not only producing applied research – with local experts guiding the definitions and tasks – but also sharing this knowledge with the entire community, in order to contribute concretely to sustainable development. This guiding principle is the basis of one of the projects that has generated a high level of learning: the Plant Laboratory, a space that, although it operates within the field, has gradually managed to expand thanks to the environmental usefulness of the results of its research, available to the entire community of Viña Naranjo and nationally. The Plant Laboratory has 29 native and endemic species planted in different specific sequences, which allows to identify the best associations of plant species -or vegetational floors- in order to discover which are the most appropriate combinations to contribute positively, both to their own self-sufficiency and to the ecosystems of the area. Throughout more than two years of work, the Plant Laboratory team has generated around the development of these vegetational floors and their relationship with the environment, which allows any interested person or organization to learn from them and use this knowledge to contribute to the rescue of the local natural heritage, carrying out a new way of urban landscaping: sustainable, resilient and native.
