Benefit of the month #5: Green Infrastructure and health & well-being
Each month MaGICLandscapes introduces a particular benefit of green infrastructure including examples from the project’s case study areas and across Central Europe.
People, peas and places: community gardens in the Nature Park Dübener Heide
Community garden initiatives are emerging everywhere. These commonly created public spaces are valuable elements of green infrastructure in cities as well as in the countryside. They provide lots of benefits, e.g. soil maintenance, opportunities for pollination, better temperature conditions in sealed areas, local food provision, teaching resources as ‘natural laboratory’ for the people etc. Community gardens enable people to come together, work for a common environmentally-friendly future and grow their own vegetables.
Since 2017 the ‘gardening movement’ also enriches the community and environment of the Dübener Heide Nature Park, one MaGICLandscapes case study area, experiencing if the urban gardening concept also works in rural areas. Two community gardens in Bad Düben and Kemberg provide the ground for citizens who love to work outside in the garden, digging over the top soil, seeding plants, growing vegetables etc. They were supported by experienced ecological gardeners for the arrangement of vegetable beds, setup of proper greenhouses and for permacultural practices. Regular assignments, workshops and environmental education activities are taking place in the gardens by participating the people from the region. The two garden plots – one railway fallow land and one run-down forest garden - were kindly provided by the Railway Station Cooperative Bad Düben (German) and by the private forest management Gniester Schweiz (German). In the future these garden will be further managed by local citizens and interest groups supported by the Dübener Heide local association (German).
The gardening project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture and managed by the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food.
Regular workshops and excursions take place on the garden plots | © Elisabeth Meyer-Renschhausen
Garden plot on former railway land in Bad Düben | © Nico Fliegner
Sowing seeds in early spring | © Torsten Reinsch
Header photo: Torsten Reinsch
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