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Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list
- choeger 7y agoIt should be noted that these gardens are comparatively cheap. For many there is no other feasible way to own a few 100m² of green and free sky.
- himlion 7y agoWow, are those gardens really that big? Here in the Netherlands there are huge waiting lists for your allotted 12m².
- sampo 7y ago> For many there is no other feasible way to own a few 100m² of green and free sky. For many this is not a feasible way either, as there are 12 000 people in line before them.
- yorwba 7y agoEh, there may be 12,000 names on the list, but that doesn't mean you have to wait for all of them to get a garden before it's your turn. Many of those people will have changed their minds in the meantime, or they don't like a particular lot that's freed up, because you usually can't just leave it as-is. The one in the article burned down, many other lots have houses that violate new regulations but were grandfathered in, so you have to demolish and rebuild. Then there's the workload of actually gardening... I'm also not sure where they're getting the 12,000 from, since to my knowledge every "colony" manages their own waiting lists. If they're just adding the number of people on each list to arrive at the total, they're double-counting people who're not looking for a garden in a particular location and appear on multiple lists. All in all, if you really want a garden, it's absolutely feasible with a few years of waiting. And if you just want to dream about having one, you can still put your name on the waiting list and politely decline each lot they offer. EDIT: there's also a sharing platform for people who need help gardening and those who want to do it: https://www.datschlandia.de/ https://www.datschlandia.de/ That is another way to get the benefits of a garden bypassing the waiting lists.
- kayoone 7y agoeven with only 10% of that list, it would still be a long wait.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago* in Berlin I’m pretty sure you can buy land in rural areas for pennies.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoThe whole point of these is that they are not too far from home.
- southerndrift 7y agoNot literally, because farmland isn't that cheap.
- sokoloff 7y agoAre these plots of land actually owned by the users? I assumed they were rented, but the article doesn't seem to specify though the terms "allotment" and "waiting list" imply to me that they're not owned by the gardeners.
- yorwba 7y agoThe land is owned by an association which leases it out to members; everything on top (house, trees and other plants) is owned by the gardener. So there's a transfer of ownership when a lot frees up, but the market is highly regulated so you can't just outbid everyone else to get a garden faster.
- alistairSH 7y agoNot sure about Germany, but in many places, you pay a small administrative fee. In a world of sky-high urban real estate prices/rents, they're approaching free.
- bananatron 7y agoInterest in small, distributed, local food production systems is really trending right now. Topsoil degradation, the future of the climate, and the malnutrition of our food are key factors - it seems like this is an important piece of the puzzle for keeping populations healthy and fed.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoThese used to be the ultimate symbol of “Spießertum”. Funny how things change and trends come and go.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lexapro 7y agoThey still are :)
- someguydave 7y agoDo Germans still credit Marxist class theory?
- Ididntdothis 7y agoThis has nothing to do with Marx.
- someguydave 7y agoHow would you translate "petit bourgeois" in German?
- Ididntdothis 7y agoKleinbürger? Depends on the meaning.
- benj111 7y ago"Spießertum" I'm getting the translation of philistine, which seems a bit harsh? Anything that better captures the flavour, for an Anglophone?
- m0nty 7y agoI got "fuddy-duddy", so presumably it was seen as an old (or old-fashioned) person's hobby.
- soupdiver 7y agoI can confirm this as I'm living in Berlin :D
- m-i-l 7y agoThere was a 40 year waiting list for allotments in some parts of London 10 years ago[0], and 6 years ago the number of allotments had remained the same but the waiting list more than doubled from 800 to 1,765[1] so it could be longer than 40 years now. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/jun/02/allotments-shortage-waiting-lists https://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/jun/02/allotments-sho... [1] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/allotments_and_waiting_lists_44 https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/allotments_and_waitin...
- DragonCot 7y agoAs somebody who has done his time on a waiting list for an allotment, and has been allotmenteering for the past 7 years now, I find these small German allotments vastly different to our UK ones. I fly reasonably often to Munich and I've often seen them alongside the railway lines... and they are immaculate. But the bit I find odd is that there is an awful lot of grass. We in the UK tend to focus more on food or flower production, yet those German ones seem more geared to relaxation more than anything. Ours are more of a weekend digging variety, theirs seem to be more of an evening BBQing and a beer kind. Maybe its a weather thing. Maybe its just a cultural thing. And maybe we ought to encourage more people to stop playing video games and get out and grow more stuff. https://martin-way-plot30.blogspot.com https://martin-way-plot30.blogspot.com
- Aromasin 7y agoIn my eyes we shouldn't stop people from doing anything. What we should do is encourage people to have a wider variety of hobbies and interest, of which gardening a few hours a week can be coupled with video games - or whatever they want to do to relax and unwind. Variety is the spice of life.
- jtbayly 7y agoSo we should try to stop people from being obsessed with one thing?
- Aromasin 7y agoI think obsessiveness has its advantages at times; people often become savants at something they're truly passionate about. However, I don't think there's ever a situation where a person - despite their passion - can't be enriched by practicing something physically or intellectually different.
- microtherion 7y agoHere in Zürich, you see both kinds of allotment owners. Some are really serious about growing food, others (presumably living in apartments) just enjoy having a bit of a yard to kick back.
- halfarmbandit 7y agoFor a brief moment I expected this to be about WOW’s relaunch where every server was full.
- whatshisface 7y agoIt looks like HN will have to loosen at least one part of its anti-suburban stance: people who live in the suburbs get back and front yards as part of the deal.
- microtherion 7y agoYes, but the decoupling of living space and yard is vastly more space efficient. It keeps the city walkable, and nobody is forced to pay for more yard than they want.
- benj111 7y agoIsnt this article the 'loosening'? Not everyone wants gardens, if you decouple the garden from the house, people can get the size of each that they want.
- alistairSH 7y agoI'm not sure I understand? Nothing about maintaining a small garden plot requires a single-family home on a large (by urban standards) piece of land. I live in a townhome, small front yard, rear is a brick patio. We have a remote garden plot down the road. It's free to use as long as we maintain it, sure beats paying a mortgage. And if we get bored with it, we can pass it to the next person on the list.
- sandworm101 7y agoI used to think of gardening and allotments as a rather innocuous activity, something rather green that was good for all involved. But in the last year I've come to realize that it isn't environmentally sound. (1) Plastics and pesticides. They are over-used by gardeners as opposed to commercial farmers. Even without chemicals, the plastics pots, bags and other devices all end up in landfills. Those innocuous black pots cannot be properly recycled due to their colour and gardeners seem unwilling to shift to more sustainable options, even more sustainable colours of pots that could be more easily recycled. (2) Peat. Until yesterday I was unaware of the carnage being done to peat bogs. The BBC's Tonight program just showed me footage of the open-pit peat mines that are literally strip-mining peat bogs to feed Britain's gardening hobby. The environmental and climate damage done by destroying peat bogs, giant CO2 sinks, is immense. Footage of an Estonian peat mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXr0z3h1Cig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXr0z3h1Cig (3) Water. Home gardens and allotments get their water from municipal sources. Municipal water is far more expensive than the water used on farms, and municipal sources lack the capacity to provide the acer-feet necessary to grow substantial amounts of food. That means allotments, urban farming, is an unsustainable food source. The carrot bought at costco was grown using river/lake water. The carrot grown behind someone's house used municipal water, and probably far more of it. The costco carrot is the more sustainable option. So I've changed my mind about gardening. It is not an environmental net positive. It might be great for the health of the people doing it, but it isn't helping the climate. It isn't as bad as drag racing but is far worse than hiking. It is an environmentally costly hobby that should be approached with caution.
- acomjean 7y agoI think you under-estimate the pesticide regimen comerical farms use (I doubt your neighborhood gardener could get there hands on some of them). Though you are probably correct, small gardens aren't really an efficient way to grow food. I'm not a farmer but this description of farming from the end of last century stuck in my mind. https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/25/magazine/playing-god-in-the-garden.html https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/25/magazine/playing-god-in-t... "I asked him to walk me through a season's regimen. It typically begins early in the spring with a soil fumigant; to control nematodes, many potato farmers douse their fields with a chemical toxic enough to kill every trace of microbial life in the soil. Then, at planting, a systemic insecticide (like Thimet) is applied to the soil; this will be absorbed by the young seedlings and, for several weeks, will kill any insect that eats their leaves. After planting, Forsyth puts down an herbicide -- Sencor or Eptam -- to ''clean'' his field of all weeds. When the potato seedlings are six inches tall, an herbicide may be sprayed a second time to control weeds. Idaho farmers like Forsyth farm in vast circles defined by the rotation of a pivot irrigation system, typically 135 acres to a circle; I'd seen them from 30,000 feet flying in, a grid of verdant green coins pressed into a desert of scrubby brown. Pesticides and fertilizers are simply added to the irrigation system, which on Forsyth's farm draws most of its water from the nearby Snake River. Along with their water, Forsyth's potatoes may receive 10 applications of chemical fertilizer during the growing season. Just before the rows close -- when the leaves of one row of plants meet those of the next -- he begins spraying Bravo, a fungicide, to control late blight, one of the biggest threats to the potato crop. (Late blight, which caused the Irish potato famine, is an airborne fungus that turns stored potatoes into rotting mush.) Blight is such a serious problem that the E.P.A. currently allows farmers to spray powerful fungicides that haven't passed the usual approval process. Forsyth's potatoes will receive eight applications of fungicide. Twice each summer, Forsyth hires a crop duster to spray for aphids. Aphids are harmless in themselves, but they transmit the leafroll virus, which in Russet Burbank potatoes causes net necrosis, a brown spotting that will cause a processor to reject a whole crop. It happened to Forsyth last year. ''I lost 80,000 bags'' -- they're a hundred pounds each -- ''to net necrosis,'' he said. ''Instead of getting $4.95 a bag, I had to take $2 a bag from the dehydrator, and I was lucky to get that.'' Net necrosis is a purely cosmetic defect; yet because big buyers like McDonald's believe (with good reason) that we don't like to see brown spots in our fries, farmers like Danny Forsyth must spray their fields with some of the most toxic chemicals in use, including an organophosphate called Monitor. ''Monitor is a deadly chemical,'' Forsyth said. ''I won't go into a field for four or five days after it's been sprayed -- even to fix a broken pivot.'' That is, he would sooner lose a whole circle to drought than expose himself or an employee to Monitor, which has been found to cause neurological damage.
- jbeales 7y agoDoes anyone know where I can get an English copy of Berlin's Bundeskleingartengesetz? I manage a community garden in Montreal and love the idea of BBQ and beers in the evening, but the city, (who owns the land), is not ok with drinking at the garden, (or cooking, in general).
- kayoone 7y agoIf you haven't tried it, Google translate does a really good job with translating german law texts.
- patrickk 7y agoThat's likely because Google trains the algorithm on EU parliament texts, which are published in all the official EU languages by human translators, among other sources.
- Scoundreller 7y agoAnd before that, French to/from English because Canadian governments did the same thing for their laws/treaties since... forever?
- yorwba 7y agoI think it's unlikely you'll be able to find a ready-made translation for free, since it's very niche. Gesetze-im-Internet has translations of the more important laws, but for the Bundeskleingartengesetz there's only the German version: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bkleingg/BJNR002100983.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bkleingg/BJNR002100983.ht... If you want a translation (to convince Montreal to adopt similar laws?) you'll need to find someone to translate it for you.
- jbeales 7y agoThanks for the link. I may be able to convince someone to translate if Google isn't good enough. If that page is the whole set of laws then it's really not so many rules as the article makes out - our rules in Montreal are probably just as long. I'm going to see if I can cherry-pick the best parts for my little corner of Montreal.
- slics 7y agoComing from a small third world country myself, I didn’t know what the market was until I was 19 and came to the states. Everything we needed to survive we grew it or raised it. It was a way of life, at 5 or 6 years old I was able to watch over our farm animals and knew exactly what was expected of me. Now a 6 years old can’t even put their own shoes on by themselves let alone know how to do anything related to self manage. I don’t blame as much the kids, the way of life in an industrial country is all about wasting time and not helping kids learn and enjoy life. We as parents have failed to transfer our experiences because we are to damn busy trying to keep up with everything it’s going on around us, and in many cases a mobile device is enough to shut a kid up. Yes, we live in a sad world that we don’t know anymore what will happen if one day markets are no longer an option.
- moate 7y agoWoof. That is a flaming hot take my friend. Allow me to counter: We no longer require children to produce labor for our living. This allows for all sorts of different outcomes. Some good (more time for education in a wider variety of matters, development of different social skills, etc) some bad (less time focused on the development of "cause to effect" production education, more sedentary lives, etc). Some parents are bad parents. Some people on simple 3rd world farms abuse their children. Some people in developed metropolises focus on teaching their children to learn and enjoy life. The world is changing, and it's generally a mixed bag. You want to call it sad and depressing, that's fine, do you. I don't see it so cynically. As the saying goes: You take the good, you take the bad, and then you have...the facts of life.
- 4b11b4 7y agoThe perspective which is open to seeing the "good" and the "bad" is usually closer to seeing the "truth". However, your open perspective does not necessarily counter the original comment. from the original comment: "Yes, we live in a sad world that we don’t know anymore what will happen if one day markets are no longer an option." If you remove the word sad, would you refute that statement? Yes, there are good and bad things about industrialization. For example, more time for children for things like education. But there are also many terrible things.
- troymc 7y agoWhen I moved to Berlin four years ago, I saw these big clusters of tiny lots with small houses surrounded by gardens and wondered what I was looking at. They are often visible from the train (U-Bahn and S-Bahn). I asked some coworkers and got mixed responses. Some said it was a bit like Berlin's version of a backyard (because in the city core, most people live in flats with no backyard). Some said it was a place to go for the weekend, something like a lake cabin or cottage in North America. There's almost no information about them online, that I could find. If you're curious to explore some in Google Maps, here are some quick links: https://goo.gl/maps/qfbQawA27KSox5BZ9 https://goo.gl/maps/qfbQawA27KSox5BZ9 https://goo.gl/maps/r4Mf1w9V6ehpS7D3A https://goo.gl/maps/r4Mf1w9V6ehpS7D3A
- atombender 7y agoThe term for this in English is allotment [1]. Quite common in Europe, rare in the U.S. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening)
- 4b11b4 7y agoI am an electrical engineer by "education" and "profession". I was never too interested in gardening or plants until my roommate tore up the backyard grass. I spend most of my time (like you) in front of a computer. Now I can spend almost an entire day tying up tomatoes, planting seeds, creating wells in the dirt so water doesn't run off, doing anything that will help more vegetables grow. There is something extremely healing that comes with tending to nature. I would bet every human has the innate ability to do it. We are mostly very disconnected from nature. Once you get back to it, you realize how healing it is for your mind and body. Now, I literally NEED these days in the backyard. After one of these days, I am more at peace. I know not everyone has the space. You can also grow a lot of things in containers. People throw away all sorts of pots every year that they get from nurseries. I have picked up hundreds off the side of the road (in the US). Also, as an engineer, you realize that your computer is not very amazing compared to nature. You're in awe at the ability of plants to respond to different situations and simply witnessing their growth provides the contrast that you need to put your computer and the technologies around you into perspective.
- odonnellryan 7y agoWe've mostly lost ourselves in productivity.
- dymk 7y agoWe’ve lost ourselves to pretending that yelling at strangers on the internet is productive.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoAs well as aggressively attempting to convince people to buy things that won’t make them happy.
- malthaus 7y agoAs someone with a Schrebergarten in Switzerland, let me tell you... its great for mental balance but its a crazy amount of work to keep it even somewhat tidy. But over here its also shifting from old retirees to young people, at the moment its qquite a good mix.
- oever 7y agoI volunteer at a Victorian kitchen garden three hours a week. The advantage of working in a shared garden is that the social aspect is larger and I'm not solely responsible for the end result. Such an opportunity is rarer than having schräbergarten and I feel lucky. It's a great way to unwind after a week behind the computer.
- colechristensen 7y agoPeople need more space in cities. People are willing to live with far too little space compared to what a person actually needs to live well. I think it is a zoning issue where local governments need to force more working green space and workspace in general. Living in small apartments without space to garden or build or maintain things makes people somewhat miserable consumer drones.
- kazinator 7y ago> Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list Obviously consequence of density. Densified people desperately want something backyard-like, even if it's kilometers from their residence.
- jhallenworld 7y agoMy town's public victory gardens also have a waiting list, but not sure how long. The popularity has definitely increased recently and they are sure peaceful to walk through. https://www.belmont-ma.gov/conservation-commission/pages/victory-gardens-at-rock-meadow https://www.belmont-ma.gov/conservation-commission/pages/vic... The rules are interesting to read: https://www.belmont-ma.gov/sites/belmontma/files/uploads/handbook_bvg_2019.pdf https://www.belmont-ma.gov/sites/belmontma/files/uploads/han...