Contribution
to the Gardening-Conference 2000:
"Perspectives
of Small-Scale Farming in urban and rural areas
- about the social and ecological necessity of gardens and informal agriculture" from 21. - 25. July 2000 in Berlin Infos: Work group "Small-scale farming and Gardens in urban and rural Areas", C/O Free University of Berlin, Institute of Sociology, Elisabeth Meyer-Renschhausen, Bülowstr. 74, D-10783 Berlin, Tel.:+49 (0)30 - 261 22 87 gartenkonferenz@gmx.de , http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~garten/ |
Univ.Prof. Dr. Gert Gröning
Fachgebiet Gartenkultur und Freiraumentwicklung
Institut für Geschichte und Theorie der Gestaltung
Universität der Künste Berlin
Hardenbergstrasse 33, 10595 Berlin
About the development of urban garden culture in some north-american and german cities in the late 20th century
In some of their publications the community gardeners in North America
refer to European, especially German, allotment gardens as historical examples.
The community gardening movement in North America is active since a quarter
century or so whereas allotment gardens in Germany encompass some one and
a half centuries of activity. Taking examples from various cities in North
America, such as Boston, Indianapolis, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle,
Montreal, I will point to more recent developments there. I will address
some of the differences with respect to activities and to organisation.
For reasons of comparison I will address some aspects of allotment gardening
in German cities, such as Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hannover,
Leipzig. Also some of the differences in historical and actual perspective
will be pointed out. The presentation is based on my own long term research
on issues of allotment gardening in German cities, and on a number of visits
to North American cities as well as my participation in a number of conferences
of the American Community Gardening Association in recent years.