Visiting a German Community Garden Project

by Ingrid Kirst, CROPS Director

In April 2007, I traveled to Germany to visit friends and relatives. One of the places I visited was Göttingen, a small city in central Germany. It has a beautiful botanic garden, a wonderful old city area, and the International Garden Project, a project similar to ours.

I had heard about the project in Göttingen from a German visitor last year, and when I realized my travels would take me near there, I called the project. They invited me to stop by the garden during a regular meeting time.

I followed their directions to take the bus out to the garden and found the meeting in progress. Once I explained who I was to the dozen people gathered around, I was peppered with questions all about the project. I wasn't sure exactly who they all were, whether they were gardeners or staff, but they were certainly very interested to hear about community gardens in the US and about our project in Lincoln. They really liked our volunteer work day idea.

Then they finally let me ask questions and told me about their project. The garden I was at is on land owned by a church. It was started about ten years ago as a project of a women's refugee group. Refugees in Germany, as I learned, are seen as temporary residents, and are often not allowed to work, so they have a lot of free time. The group was looking for something to do that would allow them to get to know each other better and to hopefully meet some Germans.

The project has definitely succeeded. In Göttingen, they have four community gardens, each with a diversity of gardeners. The one I was visiting had people from Lebanon, Iraq, Ethiopia, Russia, Morocco and also Germany. There are now International Garden Projects in many other cities in Germany, and one of the original founders is helping these projects get started. They are branching out this year into learning about bees with the hopes of having their own hive next year.

The International Garden Project is very different from the garden communities that are all over Germany. That traditional model has small gardens on the outskirts of town, where each family has enough space for a large garden and a small cabin or shack, and each garden community has a lot of rules and regulations to keep things in order. The International Garden Project is much more like our community gardens, small plots in inner city neighborhoods that are accessible to everyone, and with a more free-flowing layout and few rules.

I really enjoyed the opportunity to visit the garden and meet such warm, friendly people. In just a few short hours, we talked about so many things, making a cross-cultural connection.

Read more about the International Garden project on their website: http://www.internationale-gaerten.de/ (in German). They have posted their principles in English. Click on 'About Us' at the top of the page.