Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190828-the-gardens-with-a-12000-person-waiting-list

by gpresot • 7 years ago

105 107 7 years ago

choeger• 7 years ago

It should be noted that these gardens are comparatively cheap. For many there is no other feasible way to own a few 100m² of green and free sky.

himlion• 7 years ago

Wow, are those gardens really that big? Here in the Netherlands there are huge waiting lists for your allotted 12m².

ahoef• 7 years ago

Well, I know people who've had 100m² around Nijmegen, so it exists.

lispm• 7 years ago

Here in Hamburg in my region 150-300qm is possible.

abeppu• 7 years ago

In San Francisco, my community garden "plot" is a box of ~17 square feet (~1.6 square meters).

sampo• 7 years ago

For many there is no other feasible way to own a few 100m² of green and free sky.

For many this is not a feasible way either, as there are 12 000 people in line before them.

yorwba4• 7 years ago

Eh, there may be 12,000 names on the list, but that doesn't mean you have to wait for all of them to get a garden before it's your turn. Many of those people will have changed their minds in the meantime, or they don't like a particular lot that's freed up, because you usually can't just leave it as-is. The one in the article burned down, many other lots have houses that violate new regulations but were grandfathered in, so you have to demolish and rebuild. Then there's the workload of actually gardening...

I'm also not sure where they're getting the 12,000 from, since to my knowledge every "colony" manages their own waiting lists. If they're just adding the number of people on each list to arrive at the total, they're double-counting people who're not looking for a garden in a particular location and appear on multiple lists.

All in all, if you really want a garden, it's absolutely feasible with a few years of waiting. And if you just want to dream about having one, you can still put your name on the waiting list and politely decline each lot they offer.

EDIT: there's also a sharing platform for people who need help gardening and those who want to do it: https://www.datschlandia.de/ That is another way to get the benefits of a garden bypassing the waiting lists.

layoutIfNeeded• 7 years ago

* in Berlin

I’m pretty sure you can buy land in rural areas for pennies.

Ididntdothis7• 7 years ago

The whole point of these is that they are not too far from home.

southerndrift• 7 years ago

Not literally, because farmland isn't that cheap.

sokoloff• 7 years ago

Are these plots of land actually owned by the users? I assumed they were rented, but the article doesn't seem to specify though the terms "allotment" and "waiting list" imply to me that they're not owned by the gardeners.

yorwba4• 7 years ago

The land is owned by an association which leases it out to members; everything on top (house, trees and other plants) is owned by the gardener. So there's a transfer of ownership when a lot frees up, but the market is highly regulated so you can't just outbid everyone else to get a garden faster.

alistairSH2• 7 years ago

Not sure about Germany, but in many places, you pay a small administrative fee. In a world of sky-high urban real estate prices/rents, they're approaching free.

bananatron• 7 years ago

Interest in small, distributed, local food production systems is really trending right now. Topsoil degradation, the future of the climate, and the malnutrition of our food are key factors - it seems like this is an important piece of the puzzle for keeping populations healthy and fed.

Ididntdothis7• 7 years ago

These used to be the ultimate symbol of “Spießertum”. Funny how things change and trends come and go.

lexapro• 7 years ago

They still are :)

someguydave3• 7 years ago

Do Germans still credit Marxist class theory?

Ididntdothis7• 7 years ago

This has nothing to do with Marx.

benj1112• 7 years ago

"Spießertum"

I'm getting the translation of philistine, which seems a bit harsh?

Anything that better captures the flavour, for an Anglophone?

m0nty• 7 years ago

I got "fuddy-duddy", so presumably it was seen as an old (or old-fashioned) person's hobby.

kayoone3• 7 years ago

bourgeois is probably the right translation

zmix3• 7 years ago

No, "philistine" is actually quite right. That's how Jesus Christ called them.

You could also call them submissive, hypocrite squareheaded cowards.

The "Spieß" seems to translate to "skewer", "spit", "pike". So, they sting, but are not very sharp. They always side with the authority du jour, because that keeps them safe.

Ididntdothis7• 7 years ago

When I posted I thought about a translation but drew a blank. It’s somewhere between conservative, law abiding, rules oriented but also community oriented. But everybody has their own connotations so there is no real definition. Generally it’s used a derogatory term. Nobody calls themself a Spießbürger.

roel_v2• 7 years ago

A 'stick in the mud'?

zmix3• 7 years ago

As a "Spießer" you must start somewhen.

soupdiver• 7 years ago

I can confirm this as I'm living in Berlin :D

m-i-l• 7 years ago

There was a 40 year waiting list for allotments in some parts of London 10 years ago[0], and 6 years ago the number of allotments had remained the same but the waiting list more than doubled from 800 to 1,765[1] so it could be longer than 40 years now.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/jun/02/allotments-sho...

[1] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/allotments_and_waitin...

DragonCot• 7 years ago

As somebody who has done his time on a waiting list for an allotment, and has been allotmenteering for the past 7 years now, I find these small German allotments vastly different to our UK ones. I fly reasonably often to Munich and I've often seen them alongside the railway lines... and they are immaculate. But the bit I find odd is that there is an awful lot of grass. We in the UK tend to focus more on food or flower production, yet those German ones seem more geared to relaxation more than anything. Ours are more of a weekend digging variety, theirs seem to be more of an evening BBQing and a beer kind. Maybe its a weather thing. Maybe its just a cultural thing.

And maybe we ought to encourage more people to stop playing video games and get out and grow more stuff.

https://martin-way-plot30.blogspot.com

Aromasin2• 7 years ago

In my eyes we shouldn't stop people from doing anything. What we should do is encourage people to have a wider variety of hobbies and interest, of which gardening a few hours a week can be coupled with video games - or whatever they want to do to relax and unwind. Variety is the spice of life.

jtbayly• 7 years ago

So we should try to stop people from being obsessed with one thing?

microtherion2• 7 years ago

Here in Zürich, you see both kinds of allotment owners. Some are really serious about growing food, others (presumably living in apartments) just enjoy having a bit of a yard to kick back.

umvi• 7 years ago

And maybe we ought to encourage more people to stop playing video games and get out and grow more stuff.

You can already do this in video games though (Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, Farming Simulator, etc.)

Loughla2• 7 years ago

As a farmer in a previous life, I 10000% do not understand Farming Simulator as a game for entertainment. Farming as a career is either mind-numbingly boring, or overwhelmingly depressing. There is nothing else.

How does that possibly translate to a video game?

13of40• 7 years ago

I've got one this year in the US (outside Seattle) and I can't imagine the outrage that would ensue if I was seen using the space for barbecuing, much less drinking a beer. I even think some of the other gardeners look down on me because I'm raising mundane crops like potatoes and beets, instead of kale and lemon grass.

Cerium• 7 years ago

Enjoy! This year one of my favorite crops has been carrots-I have never grown them before for just that reason. My first bite was an eye opening experience. I had no idea that there could be so much more flavor.

halfarmbandit• 7 years ago

For a brief moment I expected this to be about WOW’s relaunch where every server was full.

whatshisface• 7 years ago

It looks like HN will have to loosen at least one part of its anti-suburban stance: people who live in the suburbs get back and front yards as part of the deal.

microtherion2• 7 years ago

Yes, but the decoupling of living space and yard is vastly more space efficient. It keeps the city walkable, and nobody is forced to pay for more yard than they want.

benj1112• 7 years ago

Isnt this article the 'loosening'? Not everyone wants gardens, if you decouple the garden from the house, people can get the size of each that they want.

alistairSH2• 7 years ago

I'm not sure I understand? Nothing about maintaining a small garden plot requires a single-family home on a large (by urban standards) piece of land. I live in a townhome, small front yard, rear is a brick patio. We have a remote garden plot down the road. It's free to use as long as we maintain it, sure beats paying a mortgage. And if we get bored with it, we can pass it to the next person on the list.

sandworm1012• 7 years ago

I used to think of gardening and allotments as a rather innocuous activity, something rather green that was good for all involved. But in the last year I've come to realize that it isn't environmentally sound.

(1) Plastics and pesticides. They are over-used by gardeners as opposed to commercial farmers. Even without chemicals, the plastics pots, bags and other devices all end up in landfills. Those innocuous black pots cannot be properly recycled due to their colour and gardeners seem unwilling to shift to more sustainable options, even more sustainable colours of pots that could be more easily recycled.

(2) Peat. Until yesterday I was unaware of the carnage being done to peat bogs. The BBC's Tonight program just showed me footage of the open-pit peat mines that are literally strip-mining peat bogs to feed Britain's gardening hobby. The environmental and climate damage done by destroying peat bogs, giant CO2 sinks, is immense.

Footage of an Estonian peat mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXr0z3h1Cig

(3) Water. Home gardens and allotments get their water from municipal sources. Municipal water is far more expensive than the water used on farms, and municipal sources lack the capacity to provide the acer-feet necessary to grow substantial amounts of food. That means allotments, urban farming, is an unsustainable food source. The carrot bought at costco was grown using river/lake water. The carrot grown behind someone's house used municipal water, and probably far more of it. The costco carrot is the more sustainable option.

So I've changed my mind about gardening. It is not an environmental net positive. It might be great for the health of the people doing it, but it isn't helping the climate. It isn't as bad as drag racing but is far worse than hiking. It is an environmentally costly hobby that should be approached with caution.

acomjean• 7 years ago

I think you under-estimate the pesticide regimen comerical farms use (I doubt your neighborhood gardener could get there hands on some of them). Though you are probably correct, small gardens aren't really an efficient way to grow food.

I'm not a farmer but this description of farming from the end of last century stuck in my mind.

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/25/magazine/playing-god-in-t...

"I asked him to walk me through a season's regimen. It typically begins early in the spring with a soil fumigant; to control nematodes, many potato farmers douse their fields with a chemical toxic enough to kill every trace of microbial life in the soil. Then, at planting, a systemic insecticide (like Thimet) is applied to the soil; this will be absorbed by the young seedlings and, for several weeks, will kill any insect that eats their leaves. After planting, Forsyth puts down an herbicide -- Sencor or Eptam -- to ''clean'' his field of all weeds. When the potato seedlings are six inches tall, an herbicide may be sprayed a second time to control weeds.

Idaho farmers like Forsyth farm in vast circles defined by the rotation of a pivot irrigation system, typically 135 acres to a circle; I'd seen them from 30,000 feet flying in, a grid of verdant green coins pressed into a desert of scrubby brown. Pesticides and fertilizers are simply added to the irrigation system, which on Forsyth's farm draws most of its water from the nearby Snake River. Along with their water, Forsyth's potatoes may receive 10 applications of chemical fertilizer during the growing season. Just before the rows close -- when the leaves of one row of plants meet those of the next -- he begins spraying Bravo, a fungicide, to control late blight, one of the biggest threats to the potato crop. (Late blight, which caused the Irish potato famine, is an airborne fungus that turns stored potatoes into rotting mush.) Blight is such a serious problem that the E.P.A. currently allows farmers to spray powerful fungicides that haven't passed the usual approval process. Forsyth's potatoes will receive eight applications of fungicide.

Twice each summer, Forsyth hires a crop duster to spray for aphids. Aphids are harmless in themselves, but they transmit the leafroll virus, which in Russet Burbank potatoes causes net necrosis, a brown spotting that will cause a processor to reject a whole crop. It happened to Forsyth last year. ''I lost 80,000 bags'' -- they're a hundred pounds each -- ''to net necrosis,'' he said. ''Instead of getting $4.95 a bag, I had to take $2 a bag from the dehydrator, and I was lucky to get that.'' Net necrosis is a purely cosmetic defect; yet because big buyers like McDonald's believe (with good reason) that we don't like to see brown spots in our fries, farmers like Danny Forsyth must spray their fields with some of the most toxic chemicals in use, including an organophosphate called Monitor.

''Monitor is a deadly chemical,'' Forsyth said. ''I won't go into a field for four or five days after it's been sprayed -- even to fix a broken pivot.'' That is, he would sooner lose a whole circle to drought than expose himself or an employee to Monitor, which has been found to cause neurological damage.

sandworm1012• 7 years ago

The math on pesticides shouldn't be too hard. Take the amount of pesticides sold to residential consumers and device by the total acreage for home gardens, which should be some percentage of all residential land. Commercial farms certainly do use lots of chemicals, but per-acre I suspect that many lawns use more. While they may get numerically fewer treatments, a commercial operator spreads the stuff very thinly. (And one can debate whether the chlorine in municipal water supplies should count.)

C1sc0cat• 7 years ago

Allotments became popular in ww2 as away of supplementing rations one of my Grandads in Birmingham (UK) used to keep chickens as in his back garden, as well as the odd bit of poaching (as he was a lad from the black country).

Wonder if I ought to put my name down for one in case Brexit really goes bad, unfortunately I didn't inherit his poachers shotgun (just as well as it is highly naughty in terms of uk firearms laws :-)

nfg• 7 years ago

Many of your points are either wrong or something many gardeners (particularly the younger end of the spectrum IME) are very conscious of. Of course all of this comes with the caveat of being anecdotal and from my own experience as a former allotment gardener and now back-garden veg grower in my 30s.

1: use of pesticides is uncommon amongst most veg gardeners, even mainstream garden magazines and culture now cover the harm of plastic use in pots etc. Note also is relatively simple to drastically cut plastic use in veg gardening by growing from seed and avoiding plastic plug trays.

2: again people are very conscious of peat use, indeed many nations have incoming bans.

3: one of the first things most allotment gardeners do is get a water butt set up to collect rainwater. Most allotments don’t allow hosepipes so if nothing else it saves lugging water back from the nearest tap. Similarly it’s easy to get water storage setup in any garden, it’s one of the first “hardware” projects on most hobbyist gardeners agenda.

gbrown• 7 years ago

You're making a huge number of assumptions, both about gardening and about farming.

1. Not everyone uses those pots, and there are lots of alternatives. Many serious gardeners start from seed. Also, you provide no actual analysis of how much waste these contribute relative to vegetable farms + shipping + supermarkets, which also involves a lot of plastic.

2. Peat is terrible, and also totally unnecessary. What's needed here is regulation.

3. Expensive, perhaps. Claiming that farms use surface water is simply untrue. Try flying over the American west some time: those little circles are often the result of depleting ground water and pumping it onto the arid ground. Both gardens and farms can be far more water efficient than they currently are (personally I use salvaged mulch and drip irrigation), but farming is currently crazily unsustainable water-wise, both in terms of consumption and contamination.

It is definitely, definitely possible to garden in an environmentally positive way. Almost everything used can be reused or obtained from other sources (single use food plastic is great for seed starting), pests can be managed at a small scale without pesticides, and efficient water practices are easy. It's also easier to incorporate efficient perrenial crops at a small scale.

Also, there are second order effects to be considered in connecting people to their food systems. Nobody notices if the far away farm providing their veggies is operating responsibly, but growing their own or getting involved with urban growers lets them see the process up close and be connected to it.

candu• 7 years ago

Have a home garden, don't really use much of 1) or 2), and we get enough rain throughout most of the growing season that usage of 3) is pretty light - on the order of "we water the garden for 1-2 minutes once every 2 weeks or so, and it's fine". (I don't have precise figures to attach to these.)

(More on 1) - we do use Jiffy planters for some things, which we then rinse after transplanting and reuse the next season. However, we mostly sow directly outside.)

There are a few things missing from this comparison, though!

First and foremost: impact of shipping. Once you ship zucchinis from Mexico to your local grocer / supermarket, there's a lot more embodied carbon than in a zucchini you pulled from your front step.

Second: mechanization. AFAIK, most home gardening is a pretty manual process. Not so for industrial-scale farming, which involves tractors and tillers and spraying planes and giant irrigators and so on. While there is a bit of "amortization at scale", those all add to the total lifecycle resources necessary to grow something. (Not to mention that all that equipment has to be built somewhere from materials extracted somewhere else, and the ongoing maintenance cost / burden of this equipment is decidedly higher than for our push mower or pruning shears.)

Finally: land use. Most farmland was (either recently or historically) cleared from forests, which are also giant CO2 sinks. The most prominent example today is probably heavy deforestation in the Amazon, mostly for agricultural and meat production. Now, of course our home garden sits on previously cleared land, but we're not clearing any more of it - in fact, we have trees, bushes, ground cover, etc. in parts of our garden space, meaning that we're taking what was underutilized urban land and converting it to a CO2 sink.

I'd love to see a scientific lifecycle analysis of gardening vs. agriculture, along with guidelines for "environmentally responsible gardening" - but I'd be very surprised if the analysis didn't come out heavily in favour of local small-scale gardening.

chucksmash• 7 years ago

In 2019, just beneath the surface of every last "rather innocuous activity" lies a whole raft of things to feel bad about and someone to let you know about it.

It's gardening. It's fine. If gardening (gardening!) is now something that should be "approached with caution" then we've jumped the shark as a civilization.

nkrisc• 7 years ago

While I generally agree with you, there something to be said for everyone more deeply understanding the impact of all the modern conveniences we enjoy. Everything has a cost, most people don't see those costs.

pbhjpbhj• 7 years ago

But the problem is that, yes, gardening is fine, but we've crept slowly to using mass-manufactured tools that are designed to break rather than metal+wood that's readily repairable, and plastic pots rather than locally made clay ones, and imported peat rather than locally produced compost, etc.. The march of "progress".

Sschellbach• 7 years ago

Im a 28 year old in US 1) i dont use plastic or pesticides in my garden. I use geopots and living soil 2) never used peat 3) collect rainwater

I eat 3 to 4 meals a week that largely feature produce from my garden for 8 months of the year.

This can be replicated without exasserbating any of the valid issues you noted.

Industrial agriculture is a scourge.

Grow your own food yall.

Ilverin• 7 years ago

Storing plastic in landfills is a form of carbon capture. The environmental cost is in transporting pieces of plastic around (added weight means more fuel use).

aphextim• 7 years ago

Here is my mini garden. No pesticides or plastics (other than plastic markers for the rows to be marked when they are seeds before they sprout, looking into this I could use a more bio degradable marker in the future).

All I do is water it when Nature doesn't provide enough, and weed it once a week for 30-35 minutes.

A little bit of corn, lettuce, peas, beans and onions to the left of the corn that you cannot see.

For just myself, this little bit of work keeps me with fresh lettuce all summer and not to mention beans/peas out of the garden are delicious!

I get where you are coming from regarding the factory/industrial farms who are more motivated with profits, however for the enthusiast or smaller mom and pop farms, there is nothing wrong with gardening and if anything should be encouraged so people are more able to be self reliant and break free from having to rely on the industrial farms.

https://imgur.com/a/j4wEooQ

DrScientist• 7 years ago

In terms of allotments most people I know don't use pesticides, much plastic ( if used, it's used again and again each year ), and municipal water use is very limited due to the allotment system that disallows hosepipes or direct irrigation systems.

Peat has been largely replaced with free compost from the local recycling centre.

Clearly lots of small scale production, even if well planned, is less efficient than well planned industrial production, but a lot of the work in the allotments case is human labour rather than CO2 producing machinery.

Note there is much less waste.

I was struck recently by a story on the BBC where they interviewed somebody living 'off-grid' in Finland. He told the story of how he occasionally get's vegetables that are discarded from a supermarket. His friend brought him some tomato's produced in Africa, packaged in France, sold on in the supplier chain - all the way to Finland where they were to be thrown away!!!

Obviously it's very hard to know how sustainable anything is given the complexity of supply - if only we had all the externalities ( environmental damage ) of production in the price ( energy properly priced ). The cost of disposal, or replacement of a resource factored in.

That kind of stuff requires government action, as free markets reward the exploitation of externalities.

someguydave3• 7 years ago

That kind of stuff requires government action, as free markets reward the exploitation of externalities.

It's conceivable that the market could price in externalities too, possibly with government oversight.

KineticLensman• 7 years ago

UK, home gardener here, growing tomatoes, beans, plums, apples and pears in a garden that also includes mature trees (oak and beech). I think my gardening is environment-positive, personally.

1) I don’t use pesticides. I don’t grow veg such as cauliflower that are prone to insect attack. The only plastic pots are those used by the garden centre when they sell plants. Every few years I use moss-killer on the lawn, but I manually weed my borders and growing areas rather than spray herbicide.

2) I have never use peat, and neither do my gardening neighbours.

3) My garden gets its water from the rain. If it doesn’t rain, my grass scorches and I reseed. I do water my tomatoes at the height of the summer. I mix grass cuttings with the autumn leaf fall to create seed-free mulch that helps moisture retention.

My garden contains numerous plants that are attractive to pollinators, and I have a large population of birds that forage in it (I counted 14 distinct species in the last RSPB bird count exercise). There are bats in the summer and sometimes hedgehogs and stag beetles. I have a small number of wood piles that I leave undisturbed for whatever chooses to live in them.

jbeales3• 7 years ago

Does anyone know where I can get an English copy of Berlin's Bundeskleingartengesetz?

I manage a community garden in Montreal and love the idea of BBQ and beers in the evening, but the city, (who owns the land), is not ok with drinking at the garden, (or cooking, in general).

kayoone3• 7 years ago

If you haven't tried it, Google translate does a really good job with translating german law texts.

patrickk• 7 years ago

That's likely because Google trains the algorithm on EU parliament texts, which are published in all the official EU languages by human translators, among other sources.

yorwba4• 7 years ago

I think it's unlikely you'll be able to find a ready-made translation for free, since it's very niche. Gesetze-im-Internet has translations of the more important laws, but for the Bundeskleingartengesetz there's only the German version: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bkleingg/BJNR002100983.ht...

If you want a translation (to convince Montreal to adopt similar laws?) you'll need to find someone to translate it for you.

jbeales3• 7 years ago

Thanks for the link. I may be able to convince someone to translate if Google isn't good enough.

If that page is the whole set of laws then it's really not so many rules as the article makes out - our rules in Montreal are probably just as long. I'm going to see if I can cherry-pick the best parts for my little corner of Montreal.

slics• 7 years ago

Coming from a small third world country myself, I didn’t know what the market was until I was 19 and came to the states. Everything we needed to survive we grew it or raised it. It was a way of life, at 5 or 6 years old I was able to watch over our farm animals and knew exactly what was expected of me. Now a 6 years old can’t even put their own shoes on by themselves let alone know how to do anything related to self manage.

I don’t blame as much the kids, the way of life in an industrial country is all about wasting time and not helping kids learn and enjoy life. We as parents have failed to transfer our experiences because we are to damn busy trying to keep up with everything it’s going on around us, and in many cases a mobile device is enough to shut a kid up. Yes, we live in a sad world that we don’t know anymore what will happen if one day markets are no longer an option.

moate2• 7 years ago

Woof. That is a flaming hot take my friend. Allow me to counter: We no longer require children to produce labor for our living. This allows for all sorts of different outcomes. Some good (more time for education in a wider variety of matters, development of different social skills, etc) some bad (less time focused on the development of "cause to effect" production education, more sedentary lives, etc).

Some parents are bad parents. Some people on simple 3rd world farms abuse their children. Some people in developed metropolises focus on teaching their children to learn and enjoy life. The world is changing, and it's generally a mixed bag. You want to call it sad and depressing, that's fine, do you. I don't see it so cynically.

As the saying goes: You take the good, you take the bad, and then you have...the facts of life.

4b11b42• 7 years ago

The perspective which is open to seeing the "good" and the "bad" is usually closer to seeing the "truth".

However, your open perspective does not necessarily counter the original comment.

from the original comment: "Yes, we live in a sad world that we don’t know anymore what will happen if one day markets are no longer an option."

If you remove the word sad, would you refute that statement? Yes, there are good and bad things about industrialization. For example, more time for children for things like education. But there are also many terrible things.

paxys• 7 years ago

Are you saying it's a bad thing that our 6 year olds don't have to herd sheep to be able to survive?

toomuchtodo2• 7 years ago

It’s a bad thing to not teach kids life skills besides navigating mobile and social apps.

My kids aren’t raised on a farm, but we take frequent trips to local farms so they can see how they operate, touch and interact with animals (help milk a cow and feed livestock, for example).

As soon as they’re a bit older, they’ll learn to weld, tend a garden, change a flat tire, perform CPR, body weight exercises, as well as survival skills. Fortune favors the prepared. And I’ll admit, I’m going to be filled with pride the first time my daughter successfully strikes an arc stick welding and fixes something on the spot.

panopticon• 7 years ago

Yes, we live in a sad world that we don’t know anymore what will happen if one day markets are no longer an option.

This doesn't seem to follow from the sentences that proceeded it. The remedy to inattentive parenting is doomsday prepping?

Gardening and other "fundamental" activities can be great ways for parents to spend meaningful time with their children, but the goal isn't to prepare our children for the impending collapse of civilization, right?

perl4ever2• 7 years ago

My grandparents had a farm, and while it was sold (in the 1950s) before I was born, just having the connection and hearing about it from family members keeps me from romanticizing it like people are wont to do after a few generations. None of their four kids took up farming, and that alone tells you something. It's a hard life, and my grandfather died from an accident while working on farm equipment, as people do.

troymc• 7 years ago

When I moved to Berlin four years ago, I saw these big clusters of tiny lots with small houses surrounded by gardens and wondered what I was looking at. They are often visible from the train (U-Bahn and S-Bahn).

I asked some coworkers and got mixed responses. Some said it was a bit like Berlin's version of a backyard (because in the city core, most people live in flats with no backyard). Some said it was a place to go for the weekend, something like a lake cabin or cottage in North America.

There's almost no information about them online, that I could find. If you're curious to explore some in Google Maps, here are some quick links:

https://goo.gl/maps/qfbQawA27KSox5BZ9

https://goo.gl/maps/r4Mf1w9V6ehpS7D3A

atombender• 7 years ago

The term for this in English is allotment [1]. Quite common in Europe, rare in the U.S.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening)

4b11b42• 7 years ago

I am an electrical engineer by "education" and "profession". I was never too interested in gardening or plants until my roommate tore up the backyard grass. I spend most of my time (like you) in front of a computer.

Now I can spend almost an entire day tying up tomatoes, planting seeds, creating wells in the dirt so water doesn't run off, doing anything that will help more vegetables grow. There is something extremely healing that comes with tending to nature. I would bet every human has the innate ability to do it.

We are mostly very disconnected from nature. Once you get back to it, you realize how healing it is for your mind and body. Now, I literally NEED these days in the backyard. After one of these days, I am more at peace.

I know not everyone has the space. You can also grow a lot of things in containers. People throw away all sorts of pots every year that they get from nurseries. I have picked up hundreds off the side of the road (in the US).

Also, as an engineer, you realize that your computer is not very amazing compared to nature. You're in awe at the ability of plants to respond to different situations and simply witnessing their growth provides the contrast that you need to put your computer and the technologies around you into perspective.

odonnellryan• 7 years ago

We've mostly lost ourselves in productivity.

dymk• 7 years ago

We’ve lost ourselves to pretending that yelling at strangers on the internet is productive.

malthaus• 7 years ago

As someone with a Schrebergarten in Switzerland, let me tell you... its great for mental balance but its a crazy amount of work to keep it even somewhat tidy.

But over here its also shifting from old retirees to young people, at the moment its qquite a good mix.

oever2• 7 years ago

I volunteer at a Victorian kitchen garden three hours a week. The advantage of working in a shared garden is that the social aspect is larger and I'm not solely responsible for the end result. Such an opportunity is rarer than having schräbergarten and I feel lucky. It's a great way to unwind after a week behind the computer.

colechristensen• 7 years ago

People need more space in cities.

People are willing to live with far too little space compared to what a person actually needs to live well. I think it is a zoning issue where local governments need to force more working green space and workspace in general.

Living in small apartments without space to garden or build or maintain things makes people somewhat miserable consumer drones.

kazinator• 7 years ago

Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

Obviously consequence of density. Densified people desperately want something backyard-like, even if it's kilometers from their residence.

jhallenworld• 7 years ago

My town's public victory gardens also have a waiting list, but not sure how long. The popularity has definitely increased recently and they are sure peaceful to walk through.

https://www.belmont-ma.gov/conservation-commission/pages/vic...

The rules are interesting to read: https://www.belmont-ma.gov/sites/belmontma/files/uploads/han...

Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

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