9 minute read
Garden & the City
Greenery in the concrete dessert
Grey is the predominant colour in the city. Even if there are green areas now and then - they are certainly not made for gardening. Nevertheless, there are some ways for Townies to grow their own vegetables.
Storey by storey concrete buildings are winding their way up into the sky while the streets below are swamped with cars fuming and honking slowly moving forwards. A city is not the nature enthusiast‘s favorite place.
Granted, there are the occasional patches of green to be found and parks, as well as the front yards that make a nice change from all the grey stones, but your own piece of meadow or a couple of vegetable patches usually only come with an inner-city mansion which in turn comes with a million euro price tag.
But thankfully, there are a few other ways to become a proper gardener in the urban jungle.
The classic option: An allotment
It doesn’t get any more »typically German« than an allotment garden. So it’s no wonder the idea of creating a small garden inside the city was first developed in these parts. It was Landgrave Carl of Hesse who had the first allotments built in Kappeln (then part of Denmark, now a town in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein) in the 19th century. At the time, many people moved from the country into towns and cities but then often struggled to find gainful employment and became impoverished.
The »poor gardens« offered them a chance to both work with their own hands and provide at least basic food for themselves. In German, allotments are known as »Schrebergärten« a name they got from the physician Moritz Schreber. He lived in Leipzig and didn’t actually have any connection to the specific idea of allotments but rather promoted open-air physical education and exercise for children and adolescents; for these, however, the aforementioned poor gardens were used a location.
In 1865, four years after Schreber’s death, a green playground was opened adjacent to the Johannapark in Leipzig and named Schreberplatz after the physician.
Another three years later, Heinrich Karl Gesell, a teacher, had the idea of creating flower beds around the playground which were soon after turned into proper gardens – the first Schrebergärten. The building not far from Johannapark from which the gardens were then administrated now houses the Deutsche Kleingärtnermuseum, the German allotment museum. In its garden you can find a gazebo which was built in 1880 making it one of the oldest of its kind in Germany.
Leipzig is still the unofficial allotment capitol of Germany. While Berlin takes official first place with 68.000 inner city gardens and Hamburg claims the second spot on the list (with about half as many), Leipzig is a close third. And relative to its population, the city can claim the highest per-head-allotment number with one for almost every 15th citizen. Allotment rents average around 0.17€ per square meter with prices increasing proportionally with the size of the city. Add to this the allotment association membership dues and overheads like electricity and insurance and you’ll end up at an average total of 373€ per year (according to the German Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning). So for a little over one euro per day you’re all set up to start growing the ingredients for your vegetable soup or fruit salad all by yourself; and you won’t have to rush to make it to the florist’s before closing time for gran’s next birthday. It’s also the perfect place to unwind from a stressful day at work and chat to your fellow gardeners. And there are even further reaching social aspects and allotments really do their bit as it comes to integration: around 75,000 inner-city gardens in Germany are rented out to migrants and there are more than 100 intercultural projects going on nationwide which provide an opportunity for people of different nationalities to come together.
The minimalistic option: a green balcony
If you can’t or don‘t want to set aside a euro per day but are lucky enough to have an apartment with a balcony you can always start a garden right there.
Because of the limited space this takes some clever planning starting with your choice of containers. From raised flower beds to pots of all shapes and sizes, your local DIY store will offer a great selection. Small spaces profit from vessels that don’t stand on the ground but are instead suspended to make the best use of your balcony’s height. Hanging baskets, plant pockets and vertical gardens are just three options. In the latter – as the name suggests – seeds are planted on the wall. With a basic talent for crafts you can easily fashion the base for such a garden yourself using either a euro pallet or individual wooden boxes. Even the most unusual vision of a balcony garden can be made a reality with a hammer, some nails and pieces of wood and – voilá - your own individual flower boxes. Make sure to line all your boxes with plastic sheets before filling them with soil though. With a bit of clever planning you’ll even be able to fit in a sitting area and a place to store your watering can, rake and other utensils.
Whatever your plans for your individual balcony garden may be, keep in mind that boxes, plants and especially the soil itself have a significant weight. So you will have to check with your landlord or the architect for permanent loads up to which weight your balcony is suitable. And of course your balcony needs to get enough sunlight. Southeastern or southwestern exposures are ideal. And if there is a breeze in the bargain you’ll be ready to get gardening.
Not all kinds of vegetables are suitable for a balcony, especially if you’re a beginner at growing your own food. Start with fast-growing fruits that do not require a lot of care, like tomatoes or cucumbers, bell pepper, carrots or radishes – in other words, exactly the kinds of vegetables you usually buy at the supermarket. Lamb’s lettuce is the ideal balcony leaf but also purple lettuce and arugula work well. They all worship the sun and don’t need a parasol or alternative constructions erected to provide shade. Herbs are a very different matter, though, and should be grown in an – at least – semi-shaded spot. Pick the right place and you’ll also be able to pick just about any herb: chives, dill, basil, parsley, lemon balm – who wouldn’t want to sprinkle a nice slice of bread or a salad with herbs grown on their own balcony? Overgrown and unused green spaces are a common sight in most cities. Excessive weed growth does not usually make for a nice view but rather lays waste to spaces that could be used much more sensibly. Which we are happy to report, is exactly what is now happening thanks to a phenomenon referred to as urban gardening.
The pragmatic Option: Urban Gardening
This term covers just about any activity people take up in order to create new flower beds and care for those already set up. These newly founded gardens are usually freely accessible to anyone and passers-by are often invited to help themselves to fruits from the trees or vegetables fresh from the beds. These activities are based on and facilitated by a fair treatment of nature and one another.
Willful destruction and excessive self-service are both taboo and the idea is that if you intend to take fruit from the garden once they are ripe you put in your fair share of work and also care to get them there.
There are more than 500 urban gardening projects in Germany which the anstiftung & ertomis trust has put on a map . Many of these projects receive initial funding from local authorities but try to become self-reliant very quickly.
Himmelbeet in the Berlin borough of Wedding is one successful example. Established on the premises of a former car park near Leopoldplatz in 2013 it now consists of 50 communal and 150 rental patches. The latter are rented out to individuals or institutions like preschools by season.
The café, opened in 2015, offers fruit dishes prepared using food grown on the communal patches. It is housed in a building made solely from disused euro pallets and clay which has received an award from the Association of German Architects.
One form of urban gardening cleverly combines the growing of specific foods with a political protest. Known as guerilla gardening, it involves activists creating vegetable patches in disused urban spaces in covert, usually night time, operations. The activists’ weapon of choice is the so-called seed ball (also referred to as earth ball) which consists of soil, clay and seeds. It can be both easily dropped in passing or hurled into inaccessible areas. While seed balls don’t usually yield a decent vegetable harvest they still serve their purpose in that they help make the city a little bit greener.
Text: Alex Kords
Photos: Loris Rizzo
