Prinzessinnengarten

Other students and I with my family opened this place in July 2009. I wanted to become a father and have a job where I had not to work too much and could bring my kids with me. So, after living few years in Cuba, that has a very intense model of urban agricolture, I tried to do quite the same in Berlin. We cultivate all the different kind of vegetables you find in the supermarkets, but we use organic seeds to show our children how they grow and how better they are. Then we try to have a huge variety of kind for each vegetable. So we have 15 kinds of potatoes, 20 different kinds of tomatoes, 7 different kinds of carrots, 25 different kinds of ments, and some exotic things like 6 cm long beans from Africa. Some of the old women got cultural connections growing vegetables when they where young in Russia or Turkey or somewhere else. They have brought seeds or even plants with them from there, which they knew from their past, and which they wanted to have here as kind of piece of home. Many people have Turkish, Danish, French, American, English, Palestinian, Arabic, Indian, Swedish or Iraq ancestors. We have a very open system, so you do not have to become a member to partecipate.

Robert Shaw, British-German

In Germany we are not aloud to cultivate and sell herbs for medical purpose, so we do not cultivate any kind of these but we have got some things which are more for health. If you got a cough you can take a thyme tea or we have healing plants like comfrey.

Robert Shaw, English-German

Indigenuous people use some bushes for their health, but I do not know them. The same for our Chineses immigrants that have many traditional medicines using plants. However when I am sick I take fresh honey, ginger and garlic. They make me feel better.

Emma Rugg, Australian

We have rugbrød that is a very dark bread which is very healty because it is rich in whole grain and dietary fiber and contain little or no sugar, and is thus considered by many Danes as a healthy alternative to whiter types of bread. I never tried to bake it myself because it is a very long process, but my father does and it is always nice to come home and have the homemade smørrebred.

Ida Davidsen, Dane

I could find mangos in Berlin or kiwi from New Zeland, however they are not very fresh and it's not very good for the enviroment to buy foods that have been travelling half the world. So I do not like to buy them.

Emma Rugg, Australian

There is a popular Australian story that became a cartoon where a little koala - Blinky Bill - eats leaves from eucalyptus trees and these leaves have some medicinal benefits as his appendix can neutralise the toxins of the plants.

Emma Rugg, Australian

Prinzessinnengarten

Today, there are still about 1.4 million allotment gardens in Germany covering an area of 470 km2

Allotment gardens are characterised by a concentration in one place of a few or up to several hundreds of land parcels that are assigned to individuals or families. In allotment gardens, the parcels are cultivated individually, contrary to other community garden types where the entire area is tended collectively by a group of people.

The individual size of a parcel generally ranges between 50 and 400 square meters, and often the plots include a shed for tools and shelter. The individual gardeners are usually organised in an allotment association which leases the land from an owner who may be a public, private or ecclesiastical entity, and who usually stipulates that it is only used for gardening (i.e. growing vegetables, fruits and flowers), but not for residential purposes (this is usually also required by zoning laws).

The aspect of food security provided by allotment gardens became particularly evident during World Wars I and II. The socio-economic situation was very miserable, particularly as regards the nutritional status of urban residents. Many cities were isolated from their rural hinterlands and agricultural products did not reach the city markets anymore or were sold at very high prices at the black markets. Consequently, food production within the city, especially fruit and vegetable production in home gardens and allotment gardens, became essential for survival.

The importance of allotment gardens for food security was so obvious that in 1919, one year after the end of World War I, the first legislation for allotment gardening in Germany was passed. The so-called "Small Garden and Small-Rent Land Law", provided security in land tenure and fixed leasing fees. In 1983, this law was amended by the "Federal Allotment Gardens Act"

Nevertheless, the importance of allotment gardening in Germany has shifted over the years. While in times of crisis and widespread poverty (from 1850 to 1950), allotment gardening was a part time job, and its main importance was to enhance food security and improve food supply, its present functions have to be seen under a different point of view.

In times of busy working days and the hectic urban atmosphere, allotment gardens have turned into recreational areas and locations for social gatherings. As green oases within oceans of asphalt and cement, they are substantially contributing to the conservation of nature within cities.

The Office International du Coin de Terre et des Jardins Familiaux, a Luxembourg-based organization representing three million European allotment gardeners since 1926, describes the socio-cultural and economic functions of allotment gardens as follows:

• for the community a better quality of urban life through the reduction of noise, the binding of dust, the establishment of open green spaces in densely populated areas;
• for the environment the conservation of biotopes and the creation of linked biotopes;
• for families a meaningful leisure activity and the personal experience of sowing, growing, cultivating and harvesting healthy vegetables amidst high-rise buildings and the concrete jungle;
• for children and adolescents a place to play, communicate and to discover nature and its wonders;
• for working people relaxation from the stress of work;
• for the unemployed the feeling of being useful and not excluded as well as a supply of fresh vegetables at minimum cost;
• for immigrant families a possibility of communication and better integration in their host country;
• for disabled persons a place enabling them to participate in social life, to establish contacts and overcome loneliness;
• for senior citizens a place of communication with persons having the same interests as well as an opportunity of self-fulfillment during the period of retirement. 

Immigrant families living in Germany can easly have their own KGA?

http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bkleingg/index.html