ABSTRACT
The Hispanic homegarden, orchards, and gardens with their flora, domestic fauna, and agricultural instruments arrived in Mexico through the convents. From them, the Spanish homegarden and gardens spread to the villages to mix with the native homegarden and orchards, generating new combinations of agroecosystems and crops nevertheless their structure continued to be based on trees and their combinations with other trees strata. In the Mexican Central Highlands, the homegarden agroecosystem formed an important assemblage along with the fauna, agricultural instruments, local knowledge, soil and water management, and their interrelationships with surrounding natural ecosystems. The convents with friars, new religion, the Hispanic homegarden, orchards, gardens, and all their components mixed then with the native homegarden and avocado, Mexican hog plum, and Mexican black cherries orchards, thus combining crops and agroecosystems. In the second half of the sixteenth century, women were in charge of cultivating and maintaining the homegarden agroecosystem.
