Al parecer no existe equivalente en inglés por lo que se emplea "chinampa".

A veces llamado "floating garden" pero según eso no es correcto.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 2003-07-26 23:31:09 (GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

¿Según eso?

What is a chinampa
What is a Chinampa? When Hernando ... 1964). Posts or woven vines and branches
hold the sides of the chinampa plots in place. Chinamperos ...
geography.berkeley.edu/ProgramCourses/CoursePagesFA2002/ geog148/Term%20Papers/Sanaz%20Memarsadeghi/whatis.htm - 14k - Cached - Similar pages



--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 2003-07-26 23:35:09 (GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

864 hits for \"chinampa\" in English.

Spanish term (edited): cultivo de chinamper�a

If you like: chinampa farming

I based my answer on the following source:

Investigating Chinampa Farming
by Virginia Popper

Excellent preservation at CH-AZ-195 provides information on plant use and farming activities for the two hundred years of occupation


Maize growing on chinampas


How the Aztec Empire fed the burgeoning population of its capital, Tenochtitlan, has long intrigued researchers. Most of Tenochtitlan’s estimated 150,000 to 200,000 inhabitants at the time of Spanish contact were not food producers. The system, known as chinampas, of draining swamps and building up fields in the shallow Basin of Mexico lakebeds, was a remarkable form of intensive agriculture that Jeffrey Parsons of the University of Michigan suggests provided one-half to two-thirds of the food consumed in Tenochtitlan.

At the time of Spanish contact, shallow lakes covered approximately 1000 km2 of the Basin of Mexico. Archaeological surveys show that large expanses of the lakes were converted into chinampas. Today the lakes are almost completely drained and covered by urban growth, but a few pockets of chinampa agriculture survive, including the popular tourist attraction, the “Floating Gardens of Xochimilco.”

...We know little about the origins and development of chinampa agriculture. ...Xochimilco lakebeds to explore the development of chinampa agriculture.




Excavating Ch-Az-195


These plants represent a number of activities at the site: food production and preparation, collection of useful weedy plants, and craft production. Food plants include the major cultigens (maize, beans, squash, and chile), all of which are recorded as growing in chinampas. Fruit trees are represented by the hard pits of Mexican cherry, Mexican hawthorn, and prickly pear. These generally grow on the Piedmont slopes ringing the lakes, although some may have grown on Xico Island. The abundance of seeds from plants exploited for their edible green leaves (quelites) show that these plants were readily available and probably eaten. These grow as field weeds on chinampas. Many of the plants recovered from Ch-Az-195 have recorded medicinal uses. Various grasses and bulrush were used for baskets, mats, and other items. Cotton (the only plant found at the site that does not grow in the Basin of Mexico) and maguey were used for clothing. The charcoal—primarily oak and pine collected from the Piedmont forests—represents wood that served as fuel, building material, and material for canoes and tools.

The excellent preservation at Ch-Az-195 provides information on plant use and farming activities over the approximately two hundred­year span of the occupation. The plant remains suggest it was a farming site rather than a mound built in the lakebed solely for fishing or mat making. Chinampa crops occur in all levels, ...Not all of the plants, however, were necessarily grown on nearby chinampas...

My research examines the diversity of plant use and farming at chinampa settlements. The data from Ch-Az-195, however, are not representative of the entire chinampa system.