The area was closed and abandoned following the division of the city and nature slowly began to work its magic, reclaiming the old crumbling administrative buildings and rotting railway tracks from the ground up. In 1995, the legal owners Deutsche Bahn AG donated 18 hectares of the area to the Berlin Senate as compensation for the “negative impact on nature of transportation facility expansion in the city center”. Thanks to the work of campaigning Berliners and ecological experts, the park was officially opened to the public in 2000 and declared a Global Project of EXPO 2000.

Today the park is a beguiling mix of industrial ruins (including a well-maintained old steam train), modern art (a series of modern sculptures and a spray park) and the fauna and flora – birch, lime, fruit and oak trees, 30 species of breeding birds, 350 plant species and lots of bees, crickets and grasshoppers – that now call the park home and keep the joggers and strollers company.

Natur-Park Schöneberger Südgelände
Priesterweg
10829 Berlin
T +49 (0)30 70 09 060

The main entrance to the park is via Priesterweg S-Bahn station (S2, S25). The park is open all year round from 09:00 until sunset. Admission: 1 euro.

About The Author

Paul Sullivan is a Berlin-based writer & travel photographer and the founder of Slow Travel Berlin. You can check out his personal website here and some of his photography galleries here.

Photo by s.laqua

The temperature has gone sub-zero and anything you plan on consuming had better taste of cinnamon or come mit Schuss. With Berlin playing host to over sixty Christmas markets annually, there’s no shortage of places for you to get your fix of Lebkuchen and gifts in the frosty open air…

Best Of The Big Hitters

Gendarmenmarkt

The sparkliest of them all, lit with all the double-Dom grandeur you’d expect from a setting in between the Deutschen and Franzozichen Doms. Visitors get a serious visual return on their one-euro investment, as well as access to the culinary delights from covered outdoor versions of upmarket restaurants plus luxurious gifts and handicrafts. Be warned, though – the gifts cost a lot more than the entrance fee. The entertainment is also top-notch, showcasing everything from fire artists to classical and Gospel groups. There’s even real donkeys. If that’s not Christmassy enough for you, you’d best start calling yourself Ebenezer.

Gendarmenmarkt Berlin, November 21 to December 31, 2011, Open Daily 11 am to 10 pm, Admission 1€ for the stage programme

Opernpalais

The stretch between the Staatsoper and Opernpalais on Unter den Linden goes full-tilt jingle bells and twinkly lights with over 200 stands of crafts and treats. This means that you can stuff your face with roast chestnuts, buy all your gifts at the same time, then lose either your lunch, your gifts or both as you take a turn on the carousel.

Opernpalais, Unter den Linden 5, Mondays to Thursdays 12.00 p.m. – 9.30 p.m, Fridays to Saturdays 11.00 a.m. – 10.30 p.m, Sundays 11.00 a.m. – 9.30 p.m.

Schloss Charlottenburg

If it’s romance and grandeur you fancy, then head to the already picturesque setting of Charlottenburg’s castle (Schloss) for one of the thirty-five days that it decks the halls for each year. As well as permanent and temporary exhibitions inside the castle itself, entertainment is served in the form of a Ferris wheel and live music from accordionists, carolling choirs and even the traditional Berlin barrel-organ. The journey westwards won’t disappoint in terms of gifts, either- with over 150 stalls nestled inside heated tents and elegant glass pagodas. There is also a separate children’s market with its own Ferris wheel, swing carousel – even a petting zoo. Even better, the entire park surrounding the castle gets its own special illuminations, allowing for an idyllic stroll through the scenery to burn off all those festive treats.

Schloss Charlottenburg, Mondays to Thursdays 2pm til 10pm, Friday to Sundays from 12pm til 10pm. Closed 24 Dec. Open Dec 25&16 from 12pm-8pm.

Spandau Christmas Market

The journey to the end of the U7 line is worth it to experience the biggest Weinachtsmarkt in Berlin, held in Spandau Old Town. Continuous Christmas cheer is provided by 250 stalls during the week and 400 at weekends, and for guests who like their entertainment seriously live and kicking, there’s a weekly Friday Christmas rock concert plus a manger with real animals on Reformationsplatz. There’s even a medieval plague procession every Wednesday if you’re feeling educational, or to keep things cheery, a St. Nikolai Christmas garden and a traditional craft market.

Spandau Christmas Market, 25th November – 23rd December, daily from 11am to 6pm.

Boutique cheer

Weinachtsrodeo at Postfuhramt 


Christmas shopping with a little extra yee-ha of luxury comes to the elegantly run-down Postfuhramt building in Mitte this year. The building, which previously hosted the CO gallery, will be transformed with booths from Berlin’s hottest designers, artists and boutiques. There’s a gift-wrap service and a relaxation area to ensure your shopping experience is as chilled as the outside temperatures, a mix of classical and electronic music to soundtrack your browsing and a selection of the obligatory sugary and alcoholic goodness to keep you fed, boozed-up and happy. A treat for anyone who doesn’t fancy wearing gloves as they shop.

4^th, 11^th, 18^th December plus the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th Advent Sundays: 12-18pm, Oranienburgerstrasse.

Photo by Physis3141

Lucia Christmas market at the Kulturbrauerei

For those who find the traditional Weinachtsmarkts just a little too Teutonic, a visit to the Scandanavian-themed market in Prenzlauer Berg’s Kulturbrauerei should hit the spot. Named after the Nordic goddess of light, the market includes a Finnish sauna for anyone who wants a chance to strip off plus more child-friendly fun in the form of a kid-size Ferris wheel, all held in the scenic central courtyard.

Kulturbrauerei, Schönhausesr Allee 36, Prenzlauer Berg, Underground Eberswalder Str., Mon-Fri 3-10pm, Sat-Sun 1-1opm, through December 22, free

Ecological Christmas Market at Kollwitzplatz

Trust the Berliners to come up with a slightly healthier alternative to the traditional gut-busting Christmas market, and it’s no surprise that this is held in that most bio-loving quarter of leafy Kollwitzplatz. While no one will pretend that a Bratwurst is going to help you detox, all the offerings are made from organic ingredients, including fair trade toys and even sustainable forestry Christmas trees on the third Sunday in Advent.

Kollwitzplatz, Prenzlauer Berg. Sundays only from 27 November 2011 to 18 December 2011

Image by Jonathan Thompson

When I’m in a city, I am drawn to the places in-between. Spaces, I mean, that somehow avoided being paved over, or built upon, or that once held buildings that have now collapsed, the rubble mostly hauled away, leaving only the structure’s ghost all filled up with spindly weeds.

Sometimes these spaces are just surprising: When vacant lots are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars just a short walk away, how has this space remained empty and undesired? Sometimes these spaces are surprisingly wild. When I visit Los Angeles, my wife always drives (thanks to urban-automobile-neurosis on my part), leaving me to wonder at the remarkably green strip of land that separates many lanes of interstate asphalt.

The vegetation is so dense here, I think, these slivers of wildness so unnoticed by the harried passersby, that I can’t help but wonder why the homeless don’t carve out little abodes here, rather than in concrete doorways. Perhaps they do.

My proclivity for seeking out the spaces-in-between did not perish when I came to Berlin. I automatically started noticing them on our first S-Bahn trip through the city (the S-Bahn mostly rides above-ground, and affords a view of the backside of Berlin, while the U-Bahn is the underground train).

These forgotten spaces are plentiful here: vine-infested hillsides; buildings that look to have been bombed out in the war and never resuscitated; random grafitti-covered walls sticking out of the dirt here and there; and an enigmatic, hulking metal skeleton called a gasometer, whose purpose I still cannot divine. They are distinctly urban spaces that have surrendered to the forces of the wild.

After I had been in Berlin for about a year, I had become enamoured with a few of these spaces in particular. In one of them, no more than a weed- and tree-infested offshoot of a LIDL parking lot in Wedding, I once came face to face with a fox. On those initial Bahn trips through the city, however, I also started noticing something else: little in-between-in-between spaces, with what looked like tiny houses and gardens.

The first one I saw reminded me of those L.A. freeway strips. It was on a narrow strip nestled between the S-Bahn tracks and and some freight train tracks, right on the edge of the Westhafen industrial complex. A low fence surrounded it, and it was divided into several different plots. Each plot had a small structure, along with a lush garden. The gardens were immaculately groomed, yet densely populated with vegetables, flowers and often a fruit tree or two. It made me wonder if Berlin’s multicultural quilt included elves and gnomes.

I began noticing these complexes all over the city; some were tiny, some were as big as city blocks, with dozens of plots and the tiny little houses.  Finally, I saw a sign on the entrance to one of these spaces. It read, Kleingartenkolonie, or little garden colony. No elves included.

Image by Jonathan Thompson

These are Germany’s allotment gardens, which are something like U.S. community gardens, super-sized. Though we like to think of urban agriculture and local foods as some sort of newfangled revolutionary things, Kleingartenkolonies have been around for a long time. The concept originated in the 19th Century, when the German government, instead of handing out welfare, granted land to poor folks to garden so that they could provide for themselves. The gardens were also intended to reconnect kids with nature, which was certainly an idea before its time.

Over the decades, the number of allotment gardens grew; when the city ran out of empty land, it bought more, with help from the federal government. After World War II, people actually lived on their plots, which may explain why so many of the current structures look more like little houses than potting sheds.

Today, there are more than 800 Gartenkolonies in Berlin, alone. Within those colonies are a total of more than 75,000 garden plots, each measuring about 250 square meters. Apartment-dwelling Berliners pay between 300 and 400 Euros per year to tend to and enjoy the plots. They must follow strict rules; at least 30 percent of the plot must be devoted to food production. Hedges can be only so big; owners are supposedly not allowed to live on the plot, but some of the so-called garden cottages appear to be big enough, and adequately equipped, for full-on habitation.

Traditionally, the allottees have been older folks, but in recent years the back-to-the-land movement has brought younger people, along with a new wave of immigrants, to the gardens. Thousands of people are on the waiting list for the gardens.In addition to getting people out of the concrete landscape so they can get their hands in the dirt and produce fresh fruit and vegetables, Berlin’s allotment gardens also add to the city’s already abundant green spaces (Berlin, with an abundance of parks and even a local forest, is considered one of the greenest cities in the world).

The Gartenkolonies appear in even the most downtrodden neighborhoods, providing oases of tidy vegetation amidst the grafitti-stained concrete and dog poop-piled pavement. They appear to go mostly unmolested by the graffiti artists, who have covered nearly every other surface in this city with their work.

There are those who feel that the Kleingartenkolonies, with each plot divided from the others by little fences as if in a mini-suburbia, are a bit too individualistic. And so, more communal urban gardens are popping up in Berlin as an alternative. Still, the slightly more private garden colonies, where the community can meet in community centers, seems to fit the particular German Zeitgeist a bit better. And for that matter, I think it would do quite well in the U.S, given the chance.

Up until recently the American dream of a big house with a big yard surrounded by a big fence to keep out the neighbors would never have accommodated Kleingartenkolonies or anything like them. That may be changing. With the collapse of the housing boom, credit drying up and people experiencing foreclosure left and right, former big-homeowners are developing a taste for smaller rentals and apartments. They no longer have giant yards of their own in which to do their own gardening.

Image by Jonathan Thompson

Meanwhile, the cost of once premium land has taken a nosedive, and big parcels that used to be farms, then were slated for development, are now sitting vacant, turning into spaces in-between. Phoenix, Arizona, where the housing boom boomed the hardest and crashed just as hard, now has many such a vacant lot, just waiting for a great community project.

Perhaps the banks, who I assume now own a lot of that land, would even consider donating it to the cause (not out of any sort of charitable urge, of course, but to get a tax deduction so that they can siphon more profits to CEO compensation, and also to unload some worthless assets). And for those of you who worry about polluting America’s Jell-O-fed purity with some commie Euro idea, check out the great essay by Grist’s Tom Philpott on the history of urban ag in the U.S. Turns out Berlin’s allotment gardens look a bit like American urban gardening efforts of old (the German gardens merely persevered, rather than getting paved over by strip malls, although that could change).

With bio-intensive gardening, these plots could feed a family for a summer, or offer an ambitious farmer enough produce to make some cash at the neighborhood farmers’ market. They’d add diversity to the concrete landscape, turn a few of those spaces-in-between into places of horticultural creativity (not to mention creepy lawn ornaments) and keep the Starbucks and strip malls and maybe even gentrification at bay, especially if the little elf houses were equipped for full-time habitation.

You can get an overview of Berlin’s allotment gardens via this map.

About The Author

Jonathan Thompson is a freelance journalist, writer and editor based in Berlin and in Boulder, Colorado, where he is a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado. More of his work can be found at his gin + gelato blog.

Nomadisch Grün (Nomadic Green) launched Prinzessinnengärten (Princess gardens) as a pilot project in the summer of 2009 at Moritzplatz in Berlin Kreuzberg, a site which had been a wasteland for over half a century.

Along with friends, fans, activists and neighbours, the group cleared away rubbish, built transportable organic vegetable plots and reaped the first fruits of their labour.

For half a century Moritzplatz hid in the shadows of the Berlin Wall. This almost forgotten corner, once zoned as a motorway junction, is now experiencing a new lease of life as a thriving urban community garden…

Who are you and what do you do here?
My name is Marco Clausen and I’m part of the Prinzessinnengarten. I’m one of the founders. In 2009 we [Marco Clausen and Robert Shaw] started to transform a piece of wasteland in Kreuzberg, close to Moritzplatz, into an urban farm. In the meantime, we’ve established this new form of urban green together with a lot of voluntary helpers. We now have 400 different plants that we grow here; we have a restaurant and a café. I think we have 7 or 8 beehives. The garden is growing every year, and new people are coming into it.

What is Nomadisch Grün?
First we decided to have a garden in the center of the city and then we had to create some kind of form in which we could work. We’re working like a company. Robert and I are the CEOs in a way, but every profit that we make – and we can make a profit – goes back into the project. The project has specific aims, which are mainly education and working with the neighborhood: transferring knowledge about ecological farming, conservation of food, biodiversity and so on. This company is called Nomadisch Grün.

What’s the history of this plot of land?
It was a wasteland for almost 65 years. There was a big department store here until the Second World War, when it was bombed. From then on it was not really used for several reasons. One reason is that Kreuzberg was and is a very poor borough here in Berlin. Another reason is the Berlin Wall was 200 meters from here. Now this piece of land belongs to the city, and the city wants to sell it. In the meantime, we can use it. We have to pay rent for it. Because we don’t know how long we can stay here, we created this mobile garden.

What happens here in the wintertime?
Like all the farms in this region, there’s no gardening going on in the winter, because it’s really harsh. We can have -20 degrees. We go on working of course but because most of the work we do is not just gardening itself, but organizing things, looking for money, doing networking, making concepts for the kind of informal education that we do here. We support gardens in different German cities, for example, and we’re starting a garden together with people from Hamburg. We do consulting, so now municipalities come to us asking what they can do with their unused plots. They come to us asking how to activate this kind of space. It’s many different things that are not really gardening. There’s a lot of things to do in the winter.

What other projects have come up? What have your suggestions been?
It always depends on who you’re working with, the surroundings, the neighborhood, and so on. You really have to go there and try to figure out what kind of potential is already there to use in this kind of project, as we do here. We see there are neighbors with competences in the field of gardening, especially when they’ve migrated from rural areas. And also about preparing food, conservation of food, and so on. There’s a lot of institutions working here with teenagers for example, and you have to find a way to cooperate with them. So you have to see the local conditions, and also the gardening conditions – light, soil, water – and legal and economic questions. It’s complex but we’ve had specific experiences here that we can pass on to people who want to start something similar.

What about the community that’s involved here? About how many people are regular gardeners?
We have a group of around 20 people who are really here on a regular basis. They have fields of responsibility, so one takes care of the tomatoes, another the potatoes and so on. On top of that we have open gardening days twice a week where people can just come by, every Thursday starting at 3 and Saturdays at 11, and then it’s hundreds of people that just come by and garden with us and learn things. Apart from that we also do workshops. Our beekeeper, for example, does workshops about beekeeping in the city.

Photo: Peggy Schatz

Do you have any stories about people that you might not have expected to be involved?
There’s a lot of people who come from all over the world, who are here for just a few weeks or a few months, and help us. But there’s also people who’ve lived here for 40 years who help us. The group that is more stable is also very mixed. We were so surprised from the beginning that there were so many people helping us. When we started in the summer of 2009, what we found here was a place completely full of trash. We had a newspaper ad saying these two guys want to start an urban farm and they need help. And the first day we opened the gate there were 150 people  doing nothing but collecting the trash. From then on we knew that there are so many people who want to make this happen.

Do you find that people who come to the open gardening hours keep coming back?
That’s different. And that’s a part of the concept. Normally if you have a garden you have to take care of it for a whole season. A little bit like a baby. A lot of people don’t want to have that responsibility. And they like the idea that they can have this experience once in a while, maybe just once a year. Other people come really often, some come once a day. We take care of the basic needs of the garden and other people can just come in and contribute or learn.

As people new to urban gardening, we were hoping you could give us some useful tips on how to get started in this scene…?
Really? I don’t know…I have no clue about gardening myself! I think there’s so many different motivations to start with things. The important thing is that you start. You don’t have to be a professional: you can learn a lot on the way. You can learn a lot from the people next to you. I think cooperation is very important. And for gardening, you have to deal with time in a different way, so patience is also a very important thing. It takes time for the plant to grow. And you have to be open to mistakes. You don’t have to avoid them all the time, but you have to really look at the thing and see what goes wrong and what you can change. This is what we do all the time. We make a lot of mistakes and try to learn from them. And this is not just important for gardening.

What would you consider to be your area of expertise?
We call ourselves amateurs. If you’re an amateur, a non-professional, what kind of strength and creativity lies in this? Maybe this is an expertise in itself, that you know you can do things on your own without being a professional and knowing everything about this field. We learned that organizing voluntary help is tricky – we had to learn a lot about this. We have a balance between working as a business company and doing things that you never get money for. And this kind of balance is also something that we can share with people. That it’s possible to make money but also do things that have a different value.

What’s your favorite thing that has come out of this garden? 
The food. That’s something we learned. Food is something that brings everyone together; everyone is interested in food. It’s also connected to pleasure. We talk a lot about global problems that you learn a lot about when you start gardening, like biodiversity, climate change, food supply and so on. But on the other hand you have an alternative that’s fun and a very intense and good experience. When you grow your own vegetables, you harvest them yourself, and you work with them directly in the kitchen, then you have amazing results.

This article has been reprinted courtesy of Gidsy. You can view the original here. You might also enjoy our previous article on the Prinzessinnengarten here, or Sanna Akehurst’s guide to Gardening In Berlin here.

About The Author

Madeline Maher is the community manager of Gidsy, a young startup based in Berlin, Kreuzberg. Gidsy lets anyone offer and book activities organized by real people. At the moment, Gidsy is looking for the best listings they can feature when they launch in Berlin and NYC very soon. For more information about Gidsy, please get in contact here.

Photo: mundraub.org

Starting life as a small blog with the support of around 100 faithful supporters, Mundraub.org has been busy building up an ever increasing database of trees and plants in public places around Germany that we, the general public, can apparently help ourselves to.

According to Daniel Nielsen, one of Mundraub.org’s founders, the concept of helping yourself to Germany’s fruits has a fascinating history. Many fruit trees, for example, were planted along highways and byways for the purpose of feeding Prussia’s military’s horses.

Initially there was no law preventing commoners helping themselves to the fruit, but in the build up to the second world war a law known as “Mundraub” – which roughly translates to stealing from the mouth – was introduced, leaving the harvest purely in the hands of the military. The law made taking produce from these trees criminally illegal and liable to fines of up to 500 Marks. During the GDR years more trees were planted due to an entrenched fear of food shortages, while West Germany finally withdrew the Mundraub law in 1975.

By summer 2010 Mundraub.org found itself no longer able to cope with the amount of interest and traffic it was receiving, which included a report on the midnight national news. Nielsen’s initial hunch was that the popularity of the project was due to Gernmany’s collective green consciousness – the carbon footprint of something picked on the roadside near your home is inarguably better for many reasons than prodice imported from Spain or further afield.

Image: muntraub.org

But his current theory is that a lot of people seemed moved more by a sense of nostalgia – nostalgia for something that British folk call scrumping, helping yourself to fruit from other people’s orchards.

Despite these vaguely illicit motivations – added to the fact Mundraub.org only share information on public sources, not private ones – the project has won support from three of Berlin’s local districts; economic practicality is doubtless at work here, especially when you consider the cost of maintaining and clearing up a fruit tree is something like 6 euros per year.

Daniel expressed pleasant surprise that several fans of the site have showed willing in taking their children along to prune the trees in order to ensure a good crop and let their offspring share a treasured childhood memory. (In the site’s top bar menu you’ll find a guide to pruning – check the “blog” section).

The surge of interest last June had some important knock on effects for Mundraub.org. The blog is currently being expanded and overhauled, planned for completion in June this year. While Mundraub.org 2.0 – currently available in German only – is still underway, you can still use the existing one to explore the whereabouts of publicly available produce in Berlin (and elsewhere in Germany).

Of course knowing the season of the plants aids the usability of the site. Harvests vary greatly according to geographical location, but for example Bärlauch (wild garlic) is growing in some places close-by to the city and there are already a variety of fruit-bearing trees within walking distance of almost anyone living in Berlin. In fact you could easily plan a day out either in the city or the surroundings, based purely on a day of picking.

Photo: mundraub.org

There’s even some commercial potential – Nielsen tells of one group who recently gathered enough apples to bring to a cider presse in Friedrichshain, then bottled and sold the results through a nearby bar. And at least one café in town uses jam made from Mundraub-ed fruit (farmers with presses are encouraged to advertise their services at this point).

According to Nielsen, users will soon be able to add their own discoveries to the map as well as share information and comments via a community forum. So if you have any other useful ideas for the expansion of this wonderful public service, feel free to share the fruits of your efforts – otherwise, happy public scrumping!

Photo: Peggy Schatz

There are almost as many food markets in Berlin as there are districts – each one embedded in its Kiez like a pearl. There are big, shiny ones like the ones on Kollwitzplatz in Prenzlauer Berg and Winterfeldtplatz in Schoeneberg, plus smaller ones that are barely noticed and some wonderfully unique ones in between.

One of the best known – and most-loved – markets in Friedrichshain takes place every Saturday on Boxhagener Platz, known also for its Sunday flea market. The action on a Saturday revolves less around discounted vinyl, jewellery and vintage curiosities and more around quality food, supplemented by a smattering of mostly second hand clothing stalls.

The culinary offerings are undoubtedly the main draw: a recent visit revealed a diverse and wonderful spread of ingredients from giant tomatoes, wild garlic, king oyster mushrooms, rhubarb and pots of herbs to artichokes, broccoli, asparagus (imported), leeks, multiple types of potatoes, fresh raspberries, papaya, pumpkins and avocados, not to mention stalls hawking fresh water fish, smoked meat and sausage, eggs, cheese, mustard, honey, specialities from the Spreewald and Thuringia…

Photo: Peggy Schatz

At ‘Einklang’ we found fresh wild garlic growing out of a water-filled stainless steel basin; a father and daughter team presented their pesto variations (wild garlic pesto, walnut pesto etc.), each one more delicious than the last.

Two men from ‘La Bruschetta’ were beaming with pride as they sliced a giant loaf of bread, grilled the slices and slathered them with – among other things – grilled vegetables, tomato, parmesan and fine olive oil.

There were ketchup and sauces ranging from mild to “owa” and sour at Eckart (I enjoyed the mango sauce the best, although the sauces were, for the most part, too sweet for my tastes); a stand with more than 100 types of liquorice (if you like that kind of thing); a plethora of jams at Bock & Gardener, homemade tarts and quiches at ‘Tartes de Tom’ and American snacks from Stacey at ‘Got Dessert?’. We even found some pretty crockery at ‘Mago Keramik’ and ‘Meine Freundin’.

Photo: Peggy Schatz

The goods at the Saturday market and the thoughtful way they’re presented are in stark contrast to Friedrichshain’s reputation as a grungy hangout for the disaffected, appealing to a broader, more inclusive mix of students, families and tourists.

In fact the abundance of lounging and playing space makes it very suitable for families, and with plenty of restaurants, cafes (like Datscha, Macondo or Kaufbar) and shops (Cupcake or Proviant for example) scattered throughout the streets surrounding the Platz, it’s easy to spend a good few hours here shopping and
browsing…

Wochenmarkt am Boxhagener Platz (Market on Boxhagener Platz)
Grünberger Str. / Gärtnerstr.
Saturdays 8.00 til 14.30
Map

About The Author

Peggy Schatz is – as the name implies – a lovely person, culinary networker, blogger and founder of the international gourmet calendar. You can see more photos of the Boxi Platz market (and more) on her Flickr stream…

Young potato plants. Photo: mattb4rd on Flickr

Ahh the sun is shining and it’s time for me to plan my garden for this year.  I scrounge seeds from anyone, and even keep seeds from fruit and herbs that I grew the year before.

I’ve been saving loo roll centers all winter: cut them in half, stand them next to each other in a cat litter tray; fill them with potting compost and sow seeds according to desired effect. Set them on the windowsill and water and by April…hey presto! Ready to plant out.

Without wanting to sound like someone from daytime telly, times are hard and self sufficiency is a good idea – but it’s not only about that. A friend recently told me “In Islam, it says that if you become unwell or irritable or are not coping with life then you should spend four weeks in a garden.“ The question is: what if you don’t have one?

The simple answer is, even for those of us without a balcony, you can always find some way of getting green fingered, even if its just putting your herbs into bigger pots in the kitchen window. (They’re always to hand for tasty recipes then too of course).

Tomato plants need regular attention and aren’t necessarily hard so you can put them in grow bags and put them in direct sunlight, either inside or on your balcony. I found Ikea bags make very good indoor containers; they’re reasonably waterproof (place them on a plastic sheet to be sure) and can be used for deep rooting plants.

Last year I had tomato plants together with the things they taste good – basil, parsley etc. But a quick online check will reveal which plants like to be with who (companion planting). For balconies there are window boxes and depending on which direction your balcony faces various options including growing pumpkins and nasturtium and radishes and even potatoes.

Yep: potatoes. Take a bucket and put about a two inch layer on the bottom chuck in a few of your last potatoes from the bag. You can even cut them as long as each part has an eye on it (where the shoot is sprouting out). Then cover with soil and plant another layer about three inches higher and so on until you have filled the bucket. Keep well watered whilst ensuring good drainage – either drill holes in the bottom or be very cautious not to over water.

If you want to go further than the balcony, there are other options also. A friend of mine is into guerilla gardening (English link here, German link here). In essence, it’s a question of location scouting, using your imagination and also respecting other gardeners’ endeavours.

Look around the streets for that patch of earth surrounding the tree in front of your house. Already been adopted? My mate noticed that the flower tubs on Hermann Platz were just full of weeds so he planted potatoes in them.  This is great because it’s free and most people aren’t offended by random plots being used for a purpose, but it is still rather unreliable partly due to its clandestine nature and also the possibility that just at the point when you efforts come to fruition someone else might sieze on the opportunity to harvest.

Prinzessinnengärten. Photo: Peggy Schatz

There are different community initiatives too. Slow Travel Berlin have already covered the fantastic Prinzessinengarten project in Kreuzberg, You can also volunteer to care for plots which don’t seem to be looked after; last year there was a one year art project called MMX where my friend and I volunteered to care for the garden. What a little oasis in Mitte that turned out to be.

Then there are projects like Bauern Garten where you get a plot that belongs to a university, but which you can plant in however you see fit. Going on holiday? No problem. Tell the admin people and they’ll organise someone to tend to it for you.

The only down side that I can see is that it’s a fair trek out of town for some, but I have been reliably informed that there’s no need to buy veggies in the summer and autumn if you manage to get such a plot.

I personally have a piece of land that I rent from the railway company Niederbarnimereisenbahn, who rent out plots on the sides of old disused railway lines. I’ve had my plot for six years now and it is a lot of work to get started. You need some good friends and preferably someone who rents it with you and has a vested interest. I love being able to have barbecues there and I lucked out on having two established fruit trees on the site (cherry and damson) not to mention some great neighbours.

I don’t have any power or water supply and digging a well has been too expensive a consideration for me up until now. Still (and here it pays to inform yourself about the area – Brandenburg is not known as Germany’s biggest sand pit for nothing) the area where my plot has a very high water table so hardy plants don’t need so much watering and a water barrel is a good investment.

I have had most success with beans, potatoes, carrots, pumpkins and roses! All my dreams about cabbages and beetroots have more or less been squished due to the high numbers of snails and slugs that frequent my garden. Still challenges are fun. I also have varying success with fruit bushes. But that’s my plot and I don’t want to bore you with it.

Finally – unless of course you live in a house with its own garden – there’s the Schreber Garten. The Brits have the allotment, in Russia there was the Datcha. Einstein had one in Spandau in the twenties. Purchasing an allotment means you can have your own little sanctuary, with maybe a summer house and…well, more or less whatever takes you fancy. So why don’t I have one of these?

Photo: Sanna Akehurst

Don’t get me wrong I have huge respect for all gardeners, but these areorganised into little Vereins (Associations) and they have very strict regulations which are stringently checked up on.

It’s not for nothing that the Germans have nicknamed them “Strebergartens“ (know-it-all gardens) there are regulations about how many of each sort of plant be it practical or decorative you have and just exactly what do you use your summer house for and are you in fact taking more water than you should and so on and so on. I could never in a million years manage to understand this. Also it is a expensive inital investment. Most people I know inherited theirs from another generation.

The main thing though is to get out there! Gardening is fabulous on so many levels. It is sociable, very good physical exercise, it cheers the heart and nourishes the soul, the time frame cannot be dictated by you or anyone else so there is a reassuring excuse that we can’t stop the weather and there is always next year.

And last but not least, you’re doing your bit to keep Berlin green.

Cafe Schoenhausen

There are many reasons to visit Pankow, one of Berlin’s several under-represented boroughs. There’s the pretty Bürgerpark, with its lovely rose pavilions and great cafe ( Rosenstein); the elliptical Majakowskiring, a string of glamorous residences formerly occupied by senior members of the GDR government; the elegant Schloss Schönhausen…

Pankow is a good place for families too, visiting or local. Aside from the park and places like Pinke Panke, another great option if you’re with kids – and one that’s good for the colder months too – is Café Schönhausen.

Inspired by Berlin’s fantastic vogue for charming kindercafes (see previously covered places such as Knilchbar, Onkel Albert, Paul & Paula), Café Schönhausen opened in 2008 to cater for coffee-and-cake loving muttis and pappis and their energetic, ever-curious offspring.

The spacious main room, bathed in natural light from the street-facing windows, is a riot of colour, from the avocado green walls and floral wallpaper to the curvaceous counter and adjacent ‘shop’ that sells hand-made baby goods like embroidered pillows, kid’s crockery, toys and clothes.

Cafe Schoenhausen

Out back is another (slightly darker) room especially for kids, with a wooden house, slide, small ball pool and other thoughtful distractions. There are some ‘normal’ tables out there too, so parents can keep a closer eye if they want or need to.

The menu is pretty broad – aside from the routine spread of breakfasts (featuring bio breads, cheeses) and kid’s snacks (waffles, wurstchen), there are interesting soups (like their African recipe stacked with peanuts), quiches and plenty of home made cakes tempting you from the counter.

There’s a bio ice cream section too and, intriguingly enough, you can buy alcohol here – prosecco with your breakfast as well as actual glasses of beer or wine.

This is particularly convenient for the various evening events held here, which include English classes for kids, puppet theaters and even food and literature events. You can also hire the place out for birthday parties – check the website for more details.

Café Schönhausen
Florastraße 27
13187 Pankow
10 – 18 Daily
Tel: 030 42 00 45 36 / 0176-832 901 44
Map