Gardening Communities: Green Spaces, Shared Places, & Local Power

warsztaty_ogrodnicze_lato_w_plenerze_foto-_nel_lato_luminoso.jpg, default, Gardening workshops 'Summer Outdoors' at the Służew Cultural Centre garden in Warsaw, photo by Nel Lato Luminoso., Gardening Communities: Green Spaces, Shared Places, & Local Power

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Parks, squares, and green areas are traditional urban spaces where we can find solace in nature. However, in the face of the challenges and difficulties of 21st-century city life, they are not always sufficient. More and more people are convinced that a garden is the solution.

In October 2024, workshops were held in Warsaw for participants of the 'The Answer Is a Garden' project. They visited two dynamically developing places, which were founded on the idea of community gardens, namely the MOST Cooperative in Siekierki and the Community Garden in Jazdów. 'Created by local communities, they are a response to the challenges of the 21st century, the climate, social and food crises, the volatility and precarity of today’s world, as well as the concreteosis of cities and hyper-consumerism,' that is how Anna Galas-Kosil, curator of the 'The Answer Is a Garden' project, explained a concept of community gardening which is popular all over the world. She added that urban farms are not only spaces for contact with nature, meeting people, and resting. They are increasingly becoming the seed of the idea of ecopolis – ecological cities of the future.

'This is where community gardens and urban farms become spaces where artistic, activist and multicultural practices can meet, create systems of connections, and where a new lifestyle can be practised in the spirit of diversity, in a way that is safe for communities and our planet,' explains Anna Galas-Kosil.

Nurturing plants & relationships

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Open Jazdów, photo: https://www.facebook.com/

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The project 'The Answer Is a Garden' consists of a series of study visits, workshops, and two-stage residencies for international artists in community gardens. It is also a way to promote and develop the idea of urban farms. All the more so because these are, by definition, grassroots projects, quite simple in operation – as long as the community around them remains active. With the growing popularity of this type of activity comes support – social, official, and substantive. UrbanLab in Gdynia published a handbook entitled 'Community Gardens in Gdynia. A Guide Not Only for Urban Gardeners', providing universal advice not only related to conditions in Gdynia. In Lublin, Wrocław and Kraków, the city halls have established branches with the aim of supporting residents in realising the idea of setting up a community garden in their neighbourhood.

In Lublin, the subject is dealt with by the Social Participation Department, and as it announces on the city hall website, in order to start a community garden, all that is required is to find a place for the garden and gather a minimum of three people willing to run it. If such a group approaches the city hall about this kind of project, they may receive aid (including financial support) and assistance in implementing it. There are already 40 community gardens in Łódź, run by formal and informal neighbourhood, social, and family groups, housing communities, schools and kindergartens, community centres, libraries, and retirement homes. Every year, the city council announces a new call for such initiatives; all you have to do is fill in an application form.

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Community garden at Lasztownia in Szczecin, photo by Łukasz Wadołowski/AW.

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'Gardening is a specific field of mental and physical activity that sometimes resembles integrative meditation practices. We are transformed during these practices, and the world begins to appear to us differently than before,' says Marek Styczyński, an expert in ecology and an activist. The sense and purpose of creating such a shared gardening space can vary considerably. Many housing estates and urban quarters in Poland are still neglected, at least when it comes to shared areas.

For residents of tenement houses and apartment blocks, schools, community centres and libraries, creating a community garden seems to be a perfect solution to improve the quality of the living environment, neighbourly relations and the level of user involvement. Such gardens are established in revitalisation areas (or rather, residents are encouraged and supported to take such actions themselves), and residents of social welfare homes are involved in their management. Growing and tending fruit and vegetables and using the harvest yourself is very rewarding and can also be part of the recovery or rehabilitation process. Because, as they say in Gdynia, running a community garden is about nurturing plants and relationships.

Developer on an urban farm

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Community garden in Katowice, photo by Marzena Bugała-Astaszów/Dziennik Zachodni/Polska Presse/East News

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Community gardens started to become popular in Poland about a decade ago; in 2015, such a place was established in the Podgórze district of Kraków. Two years later, the first beds were marked out in Ołbin in Wrocław, and in 2021, an urban farm was established in the courtyard of Kraków’s town hall. Today, there are hundreds of similar enterprises in Poland, varying in scale and reach. Currently, the largest of these is the urban farm of the MOST Cooperative, which began operating in 2023. It is located in Siekierki, Warsaw, covers an area of approximately 3.6 hectares, and its creators have set themselves several goals.

Food production is, of course, one of them, but they attach no less importance to providing users with contact with plants and the sense of agency that comes with cultivating the land. They also want to develop horticultural therapy or the idea of an agricultural park, a place for rest and recreation that does not consist of lawns and ornamental plants but vegetable beds and fruit trees. Joanna Erbel, Maja Kudła, Maciej Łepkowski, and Katarzyna Przyjemska-Grzesik, co-founders of the MOST Cooperative, presented their knowledge and experience in this type of activity in the report 'Cooperative Urban Farm as a Tool for the Development of the Urban Food Production Zone and Agroecology'.

Among the many issues related to the theory and practice of urban agriculture that they have addressed in the report are those of a general nature. 'We explain what agrobiodiversity and regenerative agriculture are and why it is important to develop them, not only for our physical but also for our mental health. You will learn about the different forms of urban agriculture: small urban farms, agricultural parks, aquaponics and vertical farming. Food distribution models that take into account the urban nature of development are also described there. We also show projects in the field of urban agriculture that are emerging in Polish cities,' they write.

Cooperative Farm Most in Siekierki, Warsaw, photo by Cooperative Farm Most.

As it turns out, the idea of urban gardening or farming is already popular enough to have become a trendy business model. More and more often, community gardens, greenhouses, and places for the communal cultivation of flower beds or flowers are included by developers in their offers of newly built housing estates. It is hard to believe that they care about the mental well-being of residents and building neighbourly relationships, but since they are clearly important to potential customers, developers include them with the intention of encouraging them to buy a given flat.

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Gaia Park Estate, Konstancin Jeziorna, visualization with a community garden, photo by Gaia Park - Gaia Park Konstancin, https://gaiapark.pl/

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Family allotment gardens & wooden houses

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May weekend at the Family Allotment Gardens by Jeziorko Czerniakowskie in Warsaw, photo by Joanna Borowska / Forum.

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But is urban gardening really a new phenomenon in Poland? Allotment gardens already existed in Poland at the end of the 19th century! And the idea of large-scale urban gardening developed after World War II, following the political slogan 'an allotment garden for every working family' and the creation of complexes of family (or workers’) allotment gardens. Although, in theory, everyone has their own small piece of land on the allotment site, communities and support groups tend to develop naturally. Spending time together and exchanging tools, seeds, and experiences have been the order of the day.

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Szeląg Garden Pavilion, designed by Wierciński Studio. Photo by Turlej / Wierciński Studio

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While family allotment gardens can still be found in most Polish cities, a community-based urban garden has developed in Warsaw based on similar ideas. Around 2011, the authorities of the Śródmieście district in Warsaw announced a plan to liquidate the Jazdów housing estate. It is a corner on the Vistula escarpment, located right next to the Royal Route, whose buildings remember the time when the capital was being raised from the ruins of war. It was then that an estate, made up of Finnish wooden houses, was constructed there for those who rebuilt Warsaw. Miraculously, a large part of the settlement has survived to this day. It is therefore no surprise that the plan to demolish it (in order to build an embassy district, among other things) met with resistance not only from the few residents of the Finnish houses but also from the users of this quiet, green corner in the heart of the bustling city. Numerous artistic and social initiatives developed on the Jazdow estate, and the rediscovered place became popular and well-liked. In 2017, the estate was listed as a historical monument, and a large and active community has developed around the wooden houses from the 1940s and their gardens.

Contemporary ecopolis

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Shared garden of the Służew Cultural Center, photo by SDK press materials

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There are many variations and types of community gardens and urban farms, almost as many as there are communities that want to create them. In October 2024, during workshops organised as a part of the project 'The Answer Is a Garden', participants could familiarise themselves with the idea developed by Służewski Community Centre in Warsaw. From March to October, children from local kindergartens and schools, residents of the neighbouring housing estate and anyone else who wants to try their hand at gardening or simply take a look at the urban crops in a relaxed atmosphere is welcome to take part in the development of the public Community Garden, under the watchful eye of Cytrynka and Muszka – two goats, residents of the Służewski Community Centre.

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Szeląg Garden, garden pavilion, design by Wierciński Studio, photo by Turlej/Wierciński Studio

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A garden with urban amateur crops can occupy a small lawn in the courtyard of an apartment building and be cultivated by several neighbours; it can be a large urban farm or part of the activities of a cultural centre. It can also coexist with a city park, such as the Szeląg Garden in Poznań, covering an area of 2,800 m² and adjacent to the historic Szelągowski Park. Beds have been created here, as well as several places to rest among the greenery. In 2018, Adam Wierciński and Agnieszka Owsiany from the wierciński-studio designed a wooden pavilion which complemented the garden space. Simple, partially elevated on poles, it is an intimate community centre, a place for social activities under the roof.

Community gardens also go well with monuments and art. That was proved by the founders of such a place in Szczecin, where the flowerbeds were created in the shades of the Gothic walls of the Church of St. John the Evangelist and in the vicinity of the Trafostacja Sztuki gallery. Many urban farms cultivated by neighbours operate between the blocks of large housing estates. The residents of the Piaski estate in Warsaw, which dates back to the 1970s, 'bummed' support from the housing association, the district office and a sponsor for their idea of setting up a garden for neighbours. They infected their neighbours with their enthusiasm, and more than 60 people, as well as children from a nearby kindergarten, took care of the garden.

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Goats in the garden of the Służew Cultural Center, photo by Ela Biryło/SDK

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Not all garden initiatives are successful. Sometimes, flower beds or planters fall victim to vandalism, the community that was supposed to take care of the plants breaks up, and enthusiasm wanes because there are no perfect projects or problem-free endeavours. But it also happens that later new projects and ventures, nomen omen, sprout from the acquaintances made in the garden. And what always remains is the greenery, the plants that have been sown, the insects and animals that find food in the beds. At a time when there is so much talk about the damage that humans cause to nature, even small attempts to support urban biodiversity are worth their weight in gold.

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