Antakalnis garden, Vilnius

Photo: from archives of Antakalnis garden, Vilnius

ANTAKALNIS GARDEN (VILNIUS)

The garden was established in 2013 by the Antakalnis community, the association Žali.lt and volunteer assistants in agreement with the Antakalnis eldership and the nursing hospital. The purpose of the garden was to promote the sense of community and involvement of Antakalnis residents in joint activities. The idea started with two field beds. In 2014, we started using a greenhouse, which had been abandoned for 10 years at the least. People were constantly invited to lend a helping hand in (collective) assistance to involve the community, to show how social innovations work, to become an example for other communities in Vilnius and in Lithuania of how active residents can use abandoned green urban areas for joint activities. Each year lessons about gardening were held in Antakalnis progymnasium, distributing seeds, which students germinated and later brought their seedlings and planted them in the garden beds. In 2015-2016, the first events, such as the Neighborhood Day, the Restaurant Day, the Harvest Festival and others, were held in the garden for the entire community, and people started changing their approach to community life and new opportunities for communication

Photo: from archives of Antakalnis garden, Vilnius

in the territory at the center of the Antakalnis eldership (Sapiegos Park), which had been barely used before.

In 2016, some gardeners (Agnė, Goda, Daiva and Gintarė) established the City Laboratory, later opening a community café and a cultural center in Sapiegos Park having signed a building rental agreement with Vilnius Tech Park. After the municipality leased nursing hospital buildings to Vilnius Tech Park on the loan-for-use basis in 2017, Antakalnis community consented to a greenhouse rental agreement being concluded between Vilnius Tech Park and the Public Institution Social Investment Fund (SIF) of the then garden coordinator and member of Antakalnis Community Council Mindaugas Danys. The public institution had to pay a greenhouse rental fee (of EUR 88) and cover the costs of used water and electricity each month. SIF constantly searched for sponsors to cover costs of gardening activities. Agrofirma Seeds (Žalia Stotelė) and Kazickai Family

Photo: from archives of Antakalnis garden, Vilnius Foundation sponsored the activities of the garden a few times. SIF also filed several applications and received support (of EUR 250-800) from the municipality and the Ministry of Social Security and Labour for communities. Every year, SIF gets free seeds from Žalia Stotelė stores as a participant in their Green Foot programme.

In 2018, M. Danys contributed to the preparation of an application of Vilnius City Municipality for a project to promote European gardening - RU: RBAN. The project received support for 2019-2020, allowing to implement “soft” activities: exchange urban gardening experience with 6 other European cities by taking part in cognitive visits, using auxiliary project material in the preparation of the procedure of gardening in Vilnius and creating the programme for promoting gardening in the city. The project activities have been supervised by a working group of 15 people composed of representatives of the public and the municipality. In 2019, it was decided that residents of Antakalnis community having paid a fixed membership fee only could engage in gardening. In 2019, the greenhouse area was divided, separating personal land plots and the community part, thus encouraging all gardeners to look after the garden together.