Vivero Metropolitano: a productive nursery landscape for Monterrey, Mexico

Vivero Metropolitano creates a regional nursery for the city of Monterrey Mexico along the Santa Caterina River, providing an ecological, social and economic landscape for urban revitalization.

Concept
The project proposes a 'productive' nursery landscape that will create ecological and economic enhancement for Mexico's third largest city while providing recreational benefits for its citizens. Large scale public landscapes traditionally demand intense maintenance regimes, draining public coffers while dumping tons of nitrogen fertilizer and water onto lawns and plantings. Vivero Metropolitano presents an alternate public landscape model: a productive openspace where daily park maintenance is one and the same with the nursery production process. A public landscape is created through the ongoing function of leased land to private nursery growers. The landscape is designed to interweave public recreation functions and nursery operations, all while producing native plants species for sale. The combination generates economic revenues, habitat enhancement, and social benefit. In addition, improvements to climate, water quality, and aesthetics through creative plant propagation, passive water harvesting and renewable energy generation are made as well.

Regional Trends
Monterrey will host an international Cultural Forum in 2007. New Forum program developments will require a minimum of 3,800 trees and 310,000 bedding plants; current growers, however, do not have capacity to produce these plant materials. In 1km of the Vivero Metropolitano nursery, [less than 4 miles away from the Forum site] 284,000 bedding plants & 27,000 5 gal. container palms are proposed for production.

Through regional analysis, it was also discovered that universally accepted global warming predictions expect that Monterrey’s climate will increase significantly by 3 degrees Celsius over the next 50 years. Studies have shown that currently, US border towns with the same ecology as their neighboring Mexican border towns are 3 degrees cooler than the Mexican towns 2 miles away. This has been attributed to the increased amount of vegetation in the US towns, providing transpiration and passive cooling. An addition of plant materials to the Monterrey area could help to reduce this warming trend.

The Nursery Landscape & Vegetative Sprawl
A Nursery landscape that integrates both recreational functions and nursery operations was conceived. The Santa Caterina riverbed provides and ideal nursery location since the most important nursery inputs [good soil, water, and availability of labor] are present. The intent is for the nursery to eventually take on a life of its own, spreading native seeds and plants within the urban landscape. This is the beginning of a sprawl-like native landscape that takes over the river, providing a functioning ecology and new generator of future urban form.

Awards:
2005 Award of Excellence, American Society of Landscape Architects National Student Award

Publications:
Landscape Archiecture Magazine, October 2005, p. 56 'Tons of Idealism, Pounds of Design Vision'