Visit to Vetiver Spain

The last few weeks we have been battling with the huge costs of building concrete retaining walls. Imagine our excitement at finding a simple organic solution to retaining our strip of mountainside! Vetiver! So on Saturday we visited Anna and David in Sayalonga, Malaga, who run Vetiver Spain (https://vetiverspain.com/). We were very pleased to find out that the supplier for Spain of this amazing grass resource is located only a 40 minute drive from where we are, so we decided to go and see the vetiver at work and pick up the plants ourselves! This gave us a possibility to look around their land and how they have transformed over a period of around 10 years time, a steep hillside into a flourishing oasis full of trees, with beautiful terraces everywhere. Vetiver works by tapping extremely deep roots vertically down into the earth, up to 4 meters. acting to create bio pillars of support to the land, and also to tap into and raise the water table to start to create a much better environment for trees and crops on the surface. It’s planted in rows, creating terraces that you simply fill in behind the Vetiver as it grows upwards, making inclined areas into level terraces. It’s also non invasive so will not take over your land. Where you put it, is where it grows. The leaves you can also cut and use for mulch. Perfect! The solution is at hand.