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Judi Lynn

(160,218 posts)
Fri Jul 10, 2020, 03:22 AM Jul 2020

Gardener Uses Colombia Lockdown To Save Botanical Paradise


By Lina VANEGAS Bogota on July 09 2020 4:21 PM

When the coronavirus pandemic swept through Colombia in March, forcing a national lockdown, Alberto Gomez decided he would sit it out amid the lush green foliage of his botanical garden and tend to his plants.

Colombia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, a fact that prompted Gomez, 72, to establish an ecological park more than 40 years ago on the Andean slopes of the northeastern Quindio department.

"It was easier to cope with the pandemic quarantine locked up here in 14 hectares of premontane forest of high ecological biodiversity," Gomez, white-haired and with a scraggly gray beard, told AFP.

Far from his family in the capital Bogota, and with his 30 staff members in lockdown, Gomez is striving alone to keep his life's work from being swallowed up by the voracious Andean forest.



Every day Alberto Gomez tends to his Botanical Garden, which he founded over 40 years ago in Colombia

More:
https://www.ibtimes.com.au/gardener-uses-colombia-lockdown-save-botanical-paradise-1595065
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