On a biting cold November afternoon, Mascha Von Oppen, a special education therapist, trudges through leafy mulch into a wild green space with a happy-coloured entrance board, in a suburb in Gottingen, Germany. An avid Masanobu Fukuoka fan, she confesses: “When I am here, I feel happiness surging within me, every time.” Her flower bed is a conglomeration of “Borretsch, Vergissmeinnicht, Blutweiderisch, Nachtkerze” (flowers like forget-me-not and primrose) and even Kanadsiche Goldrute or Canadian goldenrod, “a refugee well settled”. “One season, we planted different kinds of potatoes from different countries in adjoining patches. On the day after the harvest, we had a great feast.”
We are at the Geismar International Garden, one of around 400 similar initiatives that have grown across Germany over the last 20 years. It all began in 1995, when Tassew Shimeles, an Ethiopian agrarian engineer in a German industrial agriculture firm, began to yearn for the slow, quiet farming processes of his hometown. “At Kaltenborn (which in German means ‘a place where fresh water springs up’) a garden was created by families from six different countries: Ethiopia, Germany, Iraq, Iran, Bosnia and Afghanistan. And in 2007, it went on to be selected by the London Sustainable Development Commission (LSDC) as one of eight international projects to be studied as an inspiration for future urban policies.
“As minorities, our first challenge was to request the government for space for this new concept — healing minds through gardens. People who joined us were mostly from war-ravaged countries, immigrants who got together to nurture gardens and each other. Later, local German families also began to join us. In 1997, the Anstiftung Foundation, headquartered in Munich, began to help, initially by helping us buy seeds and later, with funding,” says Shimeles.
Generally, there are no gates to the gardens. Only makeshift fences of rope or different plant species around some of the patches, which range from 10 square metres to 80. The gardens offer a welcome space where one’s experiences, cares and joys can be shared with others. Generally meeting once a week, on days the weather is good, members are found through language and computer courses, arts and crafts, sports, theatre workshops, intercultural environmental education, music or lectures.
As we move along neat rows of spring onion and cabbage, tended by a Chinese gardening enthusiast, we are greeted by 70-year-old Frau Hesse who enquires when she can pick up some fresh honey. “The produce from our new bee-keeping programme is very popular,” says Colombian-born Nayibe Giefers, another veteran gardener. Maintaining an appropriate proportion of members from different nationalities is an important regulation that has, for the last 20 years, helped keep up the international composition of the group.
In some gardens, children have their own vegetable and flower beds. One schoolgirl remembers, “It’s like a second home.” A tool shed houses the equipment — shovels, grass-cutter, weeding tools. A simple shelter with a few chairs is the scene of much laughter and sharing with homemade couscous and hummus and flavoured tea. A hand-drawn map lists the names of the ‘owners’ of different patches. A large number of students from universities across Germany have been involved with the projects for studying community service. With the help of committed members, job opportunities have been facilitated.
There are four such international gardens across Gottingen. Currently, the group has 62 members from 16 countries, individuals with diverse cultural backgrounds and across all ages. For the members, the International Gardens provide a platform for wider fields of civic engagement and a mutual integration network. It has since sparked off a series of similar initiatives called Intercultural Gardens.
The Stiftung Interkultur or Intercultural Foundation is the national coordinating organisation of the Intercultural Gardens Network, which advises and lends financial support to set up gardens, provide information on the experiences of other projects, organise knowledge transfer, and organise networking meetings.
Christa Muller, director of the Foundation, says, “The more recent projects have learned from the experiences of such undertakings as the International Gardens Göttingen with its grass-roots democratic organisation, but each project develops its own form independently. While some gardens concentrate on developing environmental education work, some specialise in therapeutic work with refugees, and others focus on vocational training or the development of micro-firms in the fields of horticulture and catering. Community or church groups, or committed private individuals often take the initiative. The resource-oriented, socially inclusive approach has attracted growing attention!”
Currently, the idea of intercultural gardens is spreading across many countries in Europe. In Berlin, the Senate has adopted measures under which district authorities may designate land and provide start-up equipment and material. Local groups, environmental associations, urban and landscape planning authorities, neighbourhood managements, even church organisations seem to have discovered the new social spaces: gardens of healing that are spreading like wildfire.
Shobha Menon, a freelance journalist and editor, is one of the founders and managing trustee of Nizhal, a trust that works for sensitive greening in urban areas.
