Herb and turnips in Vienna
A video about herb and turnips! Too late to nip in the bud! Now they’re popping up everywhere in Vienna – on the edge of the street, in small and big parks, or in former wastelands: community and neighborhood gardens. We visited the experts from Gartenpolylog in the intercultural neighborhood garden Macondo in Vienna and learned a lot of useful information about urban gardening.
Urban gardening has its origins in New York in the 1970s. Back then, so-called “Green Guerillas” joined forces to green empty building plots. Since a few years communal gardening has begun to boom in European cities. Also in Vienna. But how do hobby gardeners go about conquering urban space for flowers, berries, vegetables & co on their own initiative? We asked the experts from Gartenpolylog about this and a whole lot more.
"Macondo is a beautiful multi-ethnic garden paradise."
In 2007 Yara Coca Dominguez, Cordula Fötsch, Ursula Taborsky, and David Stanzel founded the non-profit association. Since then they have been providing advice and assistance about initiating and networking between community gardens and share their experiences in workshops. “First you have to find out who owns the unused land – if it is the City of Vienna, then the best thing to do is to contact the responsible district representative,” say the environmental scientist Yara Coca Dominguez and the landscape architect David Stanzel.
The other requirements are quite case-specific; usually the gardeners form an association and make a lease agreement with the owner. In some projects the Gartenpolylogs act as the responsible body, as is the case with the intercultural neighborhood garden Macondo in Vienna-Simmering – an exceptionally beautiful multi-ethnic garden paradise.
More information about the current projects, founding a community garden with Gartenpolylog, and the garden for all: Nachbarschaftsgarten Macondo.
Please press CC for English subtitles!