Growing together
Hello,
We are Caroline, Elizabeth and Marco, co-founders of the association Common Grounds e.V., recently founded in cooperation with Prinzessinnengarten, a social, ecological and urban garden in the heart of Berlin, where we have been active members since its establishment in 2009. Through our experience working with community gardens, we founded Common Grounds in order to develop a forum that encourages ways of more sustainable thinking and acting. Our focus lies on identifying the potentials and needs of local, participative projects, primarily urban gardens, in order to formulate policy recommendations. Here we not only look at what these projects need while they commence, but specifically what they need to proliferate, and how these project can be incorporated within city planning and environmental strategies.
But let’s start from the beginning…
Prinzessinnengarten: Making gardens from wasteland
At Moritzplatz, a busy roundabout in the center of bustling Berlin-Kreuzberg, well over a thousand supporters have helped the site to grow, turning a lot that was vacant for 60 years into a flourishing garden. Without specific expertise, with little money and motivated by the idea of a communally used garden in the center of the city, we began in summer 2009 to put down the first roots of a flourishing garden between cement and rubble. By now, a huge diversity of plants is growing here as well as a diversity of social relations. People of different origins and of different ages meet and exchange their knowledge and their experience.
The Prinzessinnengarten is a communal project; our vegetable beds are shared without anyone claiming individual ownership. Over the course of four years, supporters from the local community have dirtied their hands in order to help the idea of social and ecological urban agriculture become real. This social and ecological engagement takes place in a neighborhood that is one of the most densely developed and socially most vulnerable in the city. Here a garden evolved that can sustain itself financially and that grew into a locus of social exchange and mutual learning.
Urban gardens inspire sustainable and locally grounded urban development. Prinzessinnengarten, as well as other urban gardens in Germany, have been able to develop small economies around its activities. Prinzessinnengarten has been able to support 15 full-time jobs during it seasons, being financially independent through its economic activities such as horticulture, the tending of a small café, selling its products, as well as giving training in gardening, ecology or the planning of further gardens. At the same time it has been able to offer high quality, healthy and ecological food at affordable prices.
In cooperation with local institutions, with universities and international partners, the Prinzessinnengarten became a laboratory for socially and ecologically resilient forms of urban development. In a pragmatic manner we ask questions on how to deal with urgent issues such as climate change, dwindling resources, food sovereignty and the loss of biodiversity. The answers being experienced and experimented on all strive toward the creation of a resilient city, not only taking global challenges such as climate change into consideration, but also incorporating local actors in the building of practical and local solutions.
The success of the garden has been vividly mirrored in vast press coverage: Since 2009, well over a thousand supporters have helped the site to grow „from an ugly vacant lot to a paradise“ (Die Zeit). 50,000 visitors come to Moritzplatz each year to see this „biotope and sociotope with a model character“ (Tagesspiegel), this „utopia in miniature“ (Berliner Zeitung), this „laboratory for the sustainable city of the future“ (Wirtschaftswoche). The value for the city of Berlin that comes from the Prinzessinnengarten and similar projects is undisputed, even by official sources. Experts see it as a laboratory for socially and ecologically sustainable forms of urban development. Internationally, whether at the EXPO in Shanghai or in the New York Times, the Prinzessinnengarten exemplifies a Berlin of open spaces for social and cultural engagement. The Berlin Senate has now announced the promotion of urban gardening as part of a sustainable urban policy.
Making urban gardens more than just an “exceptions to the rule”
Despite the garden being a celebrated pioneer project, last year the Berlin Property Fund was commissioned to sell the plot of land on which the garden stands. We only had an annually renewable lease, leaving no prospects for long-term planning. Through the immense support of our public and an increasingly motivated government, the Berlin government decided to return the property the Borough of Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain. The Prinzessinnengarten has been able to establish its model character as locus of social, ecological and urban change.
Urban gardens – here to stay!(?)
It is within this context that Common Grounds e.V. has emerged. Together with Prinzessinnengarten and the foundation anstiftung & ertomis – a foundation working nationwide on researching and supporting new practices for sustainable lifestyles, like DIY-cultures, commons and urban agriculture – Common Grounds e.V. is building a platform for technical and political assistance to new garden initiatives. The idea of the Prinzessinnengarten is cross-fertilizing: in many other places in Berlin (with the building of school gardens, or gardens in universities or other institutions), as well as in cities like Hamburg, Leipzig or Cologne and also internationally, people have started to build urban gardens in their neighborhood, inspired by the Prinzessinnengarten. Often, however, their work has been put under strain due to conflicting interest between investors, housing and privatization goals of its own local governments. Taking the recent challenges facing Prinzessinnengarten into account, we see that the needs of garden initiatives surpass merely assisting them during their start-up phase. We also have to find policy solutions for the proliferation of urban gardens. This platform will, together with other gardens, take the first steps toward a nationwide network supporting urban gardens and their existence in our cities. This will not only have a local impact on our neighborhoods, but can also be an important instrument in the creation of resilience in our cities, both environmentally and economically.
Elizabeth Calderón Lüning, Caroline Paulick-Thiel & Marco Clausen, February 2013, Berlin