Mr. Santana’s Rooftop Garden

Script

Francisco Santana lives in the centre of the capital city of Havana, in Cuba. His apartment is on the second floor of a house. His terrace is on the rooftop of his neighbour’s house.

One summer, his children were having trouble sleeping because of the heat. It was a long, hot summer. And on the rooftop the heat from the sun was very strong. Mr. Santana had an idea. Maybe he could shade the house with a vine. Something with a lot of leaves.

With this goal in mind, he planted a grapevine in the soil beside the house. In fact he actually broke the concrete pathway next to his building so he could plant the grapevine in the soil. The grapevine grew well — and kept on growing. It grew up the side of the house and onto the roof. Once it got that far Mr. Santana built a trellis on the roof. After a few years the vine covered the trellis. And his plan worked. The grapevine shaded the house, and even in the heat of summer his family was able to sleep.

The grapevine gave the family far more than shade and rest. Today Mr. Santana’s grapevine is 13 years old. Every year it produces one tonne of grapes. One tonne! That is a lot of grapes. From that one tonne Mr. Santana harvests 350 kilograms of grapes to sell. From the rest of the harvest he makes 600 litres of red wine and 100 litres of vinegar. So you can see that he makes a lot of money from just one grape vine!

And there is more. He prunes branches and leaves from the grapevines. Then he puts them in a compost pile on the roof. He makes regular visits to the market and gathers soil from the ground around the vegetable stalls. He sweeps it up and carries the soil home in containers, one by one, up to the roof. When he has enough soil and compost Mr. Santana mixes them together.

He also has a worm bin on the roof and a pigeon pen. He mixes leaves with worm castings and pigeon manure. He fills pots and old tires with the soil, compost and manure mixture. Then he plants tomatoes and other vegetables in the tires and pots. Today he has a beautiful, productive vegetable garden growing in containers on his roof.

There’s one more thing I should mention. When Mr. Santana first started to grow the grapevine there was a problem with theft. By that I mean that his neighbours were taking the ripe grapes from his vine. How did he react? He took a branch cutting from the vine and gave it to his neighbours to plant. Now they have their own, grape producing vine, and the problem is solved.