join us and make your ideal garden!

we wait for you here: Hand in Hand, Ossastr. 46, 12045 Berlin

48 Stunden Neukölln

Sa 18 Juni 14:00 — 20:00
So 19 Juni 12:00 — 18:00

An installation as part of the 'Invisible Twinning' project, which explores different garden projects (Community, Intercultural, Allotment) that mirror the multicultural existence and experience in Berlin. The installation includes a video of project participants explaining how to cook recipes from different countries, and focuses on Neukölln as an area of multiculturality by inviting visitor...s to contribute to the project as well as to alter a maquette of an 'ideal allotment garden' according to their own ideas.

Eine Dokumentation als Teil des ‘Invisible Twinning’ Projekts, das unterschiedliche Gartenprojekte (gemeinschaftlich, interkulturell, Kleingarten) erprobt, die das multikulturelle Leben sowie damit verbundene Erfahrungen in Berlin widerspiegeln. Die Dokumentation beinhaltet ein Video, in dem man von Projekt-Teilnehmern erfaehrt, wie man Rezepte aus verschiedenen Laendern zubereiten kann. Der Fokus liegt hierbei auf Neukoelln als ein Kiez/Zentrum des Multikulturalismus. Die Besucher werden dazu ermuntert, am Projekt aktiv mitzuwirken sowie ein Modell eines ‘idealen kga’ gemaess ihrer eigenen Vorstellungen umzugestalten.

48-stunden-neukoelln

Probably 99% are Germans.

We have few gardeners with migrant background, foreigners as it was once said, above all Vietnamese. We have over 5000 allotment holders, among these there are maybe 50 who are not originally German. This is really a minority, probably 99% are Germans.

Holger Thymian, German, office of Bezirksverband der Kleingärtner Berlin-Weißensee e.V.

To make a great sataras...

To make a great sataras, add a spoon of Vegeta, Yugoslavian dried vegetables, and a spoon of fresh ajvar (a cream of roasted aubergines and peppers with chilli).

a bosnian recipe

Indeed I really love sataras, that is mixed vegetables, just vegetables. Moreover we use many of them for medicinal purposes: peppermint for instance and also roots, many different ones. Also parsley is used, it’s very good when dried to drink, it’s also good for the bladder. However when I am ill what makes me feel better it is just börek. We eat a lot but many different sorts, here it’s known just with cheese and meat, but we have it also with potatoes, pumpkin...

Almira-Ada Mesic, Bosnian, Gärten Rosenduft

Vegetables stew 

(sataras)

1 Kg red onions
1/2 Kg aubergines
1/2 Kg peppers
1Kg tomatoes

Cut the vegetables in little cubes.
First cook the onions in a pot with a little bit of oil.
Then put the aubergines and the peppers (roast them a little bit)
and after some minutes the tomatoes.
Add a little bit of water.
Cook for ca. 20 min then add pepper and salt.

Once I tried to cook a soup for my husband using ground elder...

Once I tried to cook a soup for my husband using ground elder. It is a very invasive plant but if you like you can eat it like spinach or put it in the tea to clean your body. However I did it when the leaves were too big and it was awful... my poor husband!

 

 

stephanie keck's plot

I think that I would not like to have a plot in another garden, because elsewhere the fences are very narrow, everybody can look at each others, everything has to be very very clean... our garden is looser. I prefer it like this.

children area

My parents got this garden when I was 4, now I am 37. We have two wonderful cherry trees some tomatoes and herbs but mainly lots of flowers. We mostly use the garden for our free time and our children love it and also we live quite near... When I was a child my mum made a lot of marmalades, now I do myself and bake apple cakes in the autumn. Besides cultivating I like to do the hard work in the garden and I prefer to do it by myself without the help of my husband as I work in social work in Neukölln and gardending for me is a way of relaxing.

POG map

In the past we had a lot of alcoholics. When I was 20 or something like that, there was an article on the “Die Spiegel” interviewing two men of the garden and in the picture they were sitting in a children’s pool drinking beer, it was very funny! Now we do not have them anymore. Many people have changed in the colony. Now we have few Turkish, some Arabs, and some homosexuals...

Stephanie Keck, German, POG, Bezirksverband Charlottenburg der Kleingärtner e.V.

http://www.wir-bleiben.de/

Green sauce and cola

herbs for green sauce

The catmint is for the green sauce. I cut several herbs and mix them together into quark, a kind of white cheese, then eat it with cooked potatoes and eggs. It is called grüne sauce and is a typical dish from Hessen, Kassel or Frankfurt. It was Goethe’s favourite food. You also need to add garlic.  Sometimes I also use borage or comfrey, which you can also eat. Comfrey tastes like cucumber. You can put it on burns and make tea from it and  it helps if you have a cold. Comfrey is not traditionally in green sauce, but I use everything that is green and edible. Occasionally I put radish, but it is a little bitter. In former times people placed radish in their prayer books, they would chew it and the bitterness would keep them awake so as not to fall asleep in church.  Jewish people also use radish for Pesach.

brigitte and giulia

You will be surprised when I tell you that I have a cola plant, its not cola, you don't make cola from it, but it smells like coca cola. I always say to the children, tell your parents, they will not believe it.  It really smells like coca cola. I put it into my tea and its very nice. To be truthful, it is actually artemisia aberbraut, but I don't put it in the green sauce, it is not so good. It is bitter, because artemesia is really very bitter. When these plants here grow up, the children will go to their parents and they tell them they are growing plants of coca cola and fruit gum and the parents say: "No, I don’t believe it, you are crazy, you are dreaming about it". But it is real.

Brigitte (Fatima) Kanacher-Ataya, German, Wuhlegärten

 

artemisia

 

A community oven at Wuhlegärten

gerda and giulia

Our colony opened in 2003. We have people coming from Argentina, Bosnia, Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary and Vietnam and as we have built a big oven in the middle of the colony so that everyone can bake bread according to his or her traditions, so I have learnt many way of baking it.

Gerda Münich, German, Wuhlegärten

the oven

http://stiftung-interkultur.de/berlin/berlin-koepenick-wuhlegarten

I like to spend my time in the garden studying and playing music with my friends

Paulina with some friend playing music in her allotment

My father moved from Columbia to Berlin almost twenty years ago and we got the garden just two years after we applied for it.  We have a lot of beans over here, plus potatoes, carrots, cherries, basilicum, melissa and camomille. I like to spend my time in the garden studying and playing music with my friends even if we are the only ones our ages. The others usually are older, mostly my parents' age. They know and meet a lot of people here in the colony, though some can be a little bit conservative and a little strange with immigrants and homosexuals. Some of them are the ones with the German flag waving on their plot, but not all of them. The others are just proud to be Germans.

Anna Paulina Solano Miller, German-Columbian, POG, Bezirksverband Charlottenburg der Kleingärtner e.V.

Berliner Allmende-Kontor

a new project in berlin

severin halder mounting the banner

I started gardening at 14, but of course I am not a "real" gardener. I have sudied biology and my thesis on urban agriculture in Rio de Janeiro where I was working with an Ong, however gardening is just one side for me. The social side is more important. Unfortunately we have not people with immigrant backgrounds that joined the project yet, but we have just started. We have to manage to involve people of the sorrounding areas. There are a lot of them from Turkey, Eastern Europe or Arabian countries that have a great knowledge about gardening and for sure had a garden in their Romenia, Anatolia or wherever. They grew up in the countryside and they are going to bring their knowledge in their graves. Of course it happens that you are closer to the people that mirror you, but we have to force ourselves to be more in tough with the others.

Severin Halder

the first plants planted

mila interviewing kristin radix

Plants from the south need more heat and sun. Here in Gemany, for instance, if you want to grow courgettes you have to plant them at home, but you need a good exposition. You have to plant them indoor around february and you can bring them out on april. Salad, onions and potatoes are robust, so you can plant them outdoor when you wish, end of march, april, may. Just the experience let you know when they are ready, for this reason elders have much more knowledge than youngers as they have benn in touch with the ecosystem longer.

carrying tools for gardening

Together with other 20 people, I am in the  organization of Allmende-Kontor, then there are almost other 20 people who help us and other 100 who are interested in and signed to join our meetings. We have just started but we have a contract for 3 years and we got 5000 mq2, so it is a very long and big process... and the starting is quite difficult as we have to  carry everything: soil, wood, boxes and cannot leave anything in the night for the vandalism.

Kristin Radix

severin pointing the first pees

malte zacharias

These are cauliflowers even if they have been just seeded and you cannot see them. For these reason we put these little sticks, to have an orientation and understand where the plants will grow. Inside the soil you always have a lot of different kinds of seeds, so you have to know which plants support and get rid of the weeds.
The canvas instead  - that has to be putted all inside the case - is to avoid the soil going out, as soil is so expensive and we already have to pay a rent for this area (1 euro for 1 meter, so 5000 euro for year), so we really cannot waste it.

Severin Halder

on the right, Elisabeth Meyer-Renschausen

the soil

I like gardening because everyone can learn just thanks to the experience. Nowadays all of us have to be experts in everything before doing it. But it is not true. You can learn just trying and experimenting and it is easy. In one day you can learn how to repair you bike, for istance. So you can be indipendent for food and transport and it is a lot! You feel so powerfull.

tempelhof

Gardening to me is mostly pushing garden movements. I wish to promote social issues through gardening. Social and political. We have to be coinscious of what we eat and need. We import so much even if it is possible that you grow your own things. This kind of lifestyle is not working. It is just for few people at the highest prices. And what you plant taste so different, even from organic food. I do not care about labeling (organic or not) but I make difference between good quality and not. I think that Italian granmothers going to the markets are conscious of which is a tasty tomato and which not. In Germany we cannot recognize it anymore. Going to the markets in Berlin is bohemian and expensive.

Severin Halder 

http://www.tempelhoferfreiheit.de/mitgestalten/pionierfelder/oderstrasse/ 

A nice walk in Bürgergarten Laskerwiese e.V.

Hana Gunkel and Andreas Pfenning working of their parcel

view of the supermarket

We have almost twenty parcels in the garden. Some of them are cultivated by just one or two people, then we have a big one that is cultivated by a house community of 8 people. We are like 30 members, I think, very different in ages but not in provenances. Even if this is supposed to be an intercultural garden, we have just one person from Turkey and another one from Argentina. Every second saturday in the good season we have community gardening as we have many community areas that are cultivated by all the people together and we do also have connections with other urban gardenings in the city. So I could learn a lot about cultivating as when we got the plot we knew almost nothing, but the neighbours gave us suggestions. I think this would not happened in a kleingaerten where everybody has its private and fenced parcel. They are really "private" places.

their proud baby

other parcels

Andreas and his baby

behind ostkreuz

There is a dogs area around here, so often it happens that dogs come in and shit everywhere. We had to plants some aromatic plants that dogs do not like to keep them away but besides this, sometimes it happens that also few young guys come in and destroy some areas as this still remain a public space and everybody can come in.

many people live around the area

the water is collected from the roof of the supermarket

The garden openend in 2004 or 2005 but we got our little plot just last year. I had just got my little baby and I had a lot of free time so we decided to start cultivating. We have different kinds of beans, strawberries, potatoes, , beetroots and some herbs... all vegetables are healthy. It is great to have a green oasi inside the city. I grew in the suburbs of Berlin where there are a lot of green areas and I missed them.

the family

cauliflowers

the pond is a community area

A neighbour of ours did not have so much time to look after his plot, so when he came again after weeks he found it completely invaded by calendula and he has a little child so when he saw his plot he just sayd: "Oh, we have calendula!". And he used it everywhere, for tea, oil, oinment... giving it to his child.

a place to play

Hana Gunkel, German, Bürgergarten Laskerwiese

http://laskerwiese.blogspot.com/

A day cooking with giulia and Husniye Ozturk

ton steine gaerten

not just a bench

springtime

tulips

savory

preparing the ingredients

for a Gruene Bohnen Eintopf

bohnen and onions

two of us

onions and bohnen again

overview at ton steine

some parcels

Husniye Ozturk

behind the stage

giulia and Husniye Ozturk

making a video

and waiting for the lunch

it's almost ready

last frame

Gruene Bohnen Eintopf (French Been Stew):

2 red onions, 2 tomatoes,
500 gr turkish green beens (short and flat),
oil, salt.

Clean the green beens.
cut the onion and tomatoes in cubes.
In a big plate mix onions, tomatoes and beans.
Put salt.
Put the pot on the fire and add some oil , than add the vegetables.
add hot water nd cover the pot.
cook for about 20 minutes turning sometimes the stew.

1. In a skillet over medium high heat, melt butter and add rice, stirring and cooking til golden.
2. Add soup mix, then stir in water.
3. Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes or until water is absorbed and the rice is tender.
4. Add turkey and heat through.
5. Serve, if desired, with coconut, chopped peanuts, raisins or chutney.