Photo: Paola de Grenet | The Guardian
Sixty-five years after Joan Carulla Figueres turned the roof terrace of his Barcelona apartment into the city's first roof garden, his "allotment in the sky" is home to more than 40 fruit trees, vines that produce 100kg (220lbs) of grapes a year, olives, peaches, figs, garlic, aubergines and even potatoes. He moved to Barcelona from Juneda, a village with a harsh climate in the Catalan interior, in the 1950s, and with his family and a team of builders from Juneda, spent 14 years building the block of flats. They strengthened the terrace, installed an undersoil drainage network to cope with 70 tons of soil, 25cm (10in) deep, and created a system for collecting and storing 9,500 liters of rainwater. School visits are one of his great joys. "It was a dream of mine when I started this allotment, to create a slice of the countryside in the city to teach children how to love plants."
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