Unlike Phyllis, I don’t have a backyard to garden in, but I am a member of a young community garden, Bürgergarten Laskerwiese. Anke recently photographed me weeding my vegetable bed there, 10 square meters (90 square feet) which I share with Marko. You are invited to visit us this Saturday, when the gardeners will be hosting an open house as part of the Berlin-wide festival Langer Tag der Stadtnatur (Long Day of Urban Nature).
The festival will run from Saturday morning through Sunday evening and includes everything from tours of courtyard gardens hidden behind apartment buildings to nighttime searches for wild boars, which are rampant in many of Berlin’s larger parks! A look through the jam-packed program gives you a colorful picture of all the parks, zoos, teaching farms and other nature-oriented projects and non-profits in our verdant city.
At our garden, we’ll be offering tours at 4pm and 6pm, and in between, a workshop on soil- and water-testing (which I will be helping to teach!) and snacks from the garden. Also, the ecological youth club next door will be grilling bratwurst and baking bread in their clay oven, with all food and drink available for modest prices. You can find us near S-Bahnhof Ostbahnhof at 6-8 Laskerstraße.
Hope to see you there!
The Long Day of Urban Nature! One of our events should sport this awesome title. I wish I could be there – you’ll have to tell me all about it.
By the way, I had a random thought of something to include in our exhibition – what if we took weeds pulled from the neighborhood community garden, potted them, and kept them in the gallery to give away? Is this a ridiculous idea?
Hi Sara, it’s funny that the title amuses you so much. I guess it sounds awkwardly dramatic (or even strenuous) in English. In Berlin it’s a fairly common event concept. Every six months there’s a Long Night of Museums (when almost every museum in the city is open until 2am and one ticket gets you in everywhere) and every June there’s a Long Night of Science at the universities with lab tours and lectures.
There’s also 48 Hours Neukölln, an open studios festival in the artsy, diverse district of Neukölln that runs from Friday evening to Sunday evening. That was last weekend and you can see some incredible pictures of an urban-plant-related installation on Anke’s blog. The installation is actually in service of a photography project by Florian Rexroth.
Hi,
My boyfriend and I will be visiting Berlin between September 21-30th and we are looking for information about Green Berlin and to learn more about Urabn Gardening in Berlin. Perhaps visit such a garden while we’re there.
I would appreciate if you could direct me to the right place to learn more about green events in the city.
Thank you,
Hadar.
Hi Hadar, Sorry I missed replying to this, we’ve been behind on the website lately. I hope you had a great trip!
Hello,
Hope this message finds you well. Is it possible to rent a plot in your garden, or do you know of any other urban community garden project where one can acquire space to grow organic vegetables? I hope to be involved in such a project early next year, so any info would be really helpful,
Thanks,
-Sophie Iremonger
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Hi Sophie, sorry this is coming so late. You can certainly join our garden – membership is 10 Euros a year and most members get a plot of their own. Sometimes you have to wait on a waiting list, but you can get off the list and into your own plot pretty quickly if you start participating in community events like meetings and group work days together. The garden’s website is http://laskerwiese.blogspot.com/ and there is contact info there.