Allotment (gardening)

The small garden, even allotment, arbor, Home Garden, garden (especially in Switzerland), Bünt / Pünt / Beunde ( südd, Switzerland. ), Or plot, called a fenced piece of land as a garden, especially a system of land, the are managed by associations ( allotment holders associations, small garden clubs, east german and garden division) and cheap leased to members. Such systems are also known as allotment gardens or allotments, and the individual plots are often called figuratively arbors.

Allotments as recreational spaces

Allotments are intended to serve the recreation in nature and allow city residents after old farm gardens growing fruit and vegetables. Today you can find in these gardens but also ornamental plants and lawns.

In general, there is a gazebo on each property gardens. The knob controls the Garden for life by the respective allotment order / statutes of each association and the Federal Garden Law ( BKleingG ).

Demographics of the allotment gardeners

The average age of the allotment users is 60. The inflow of younger families has increased. From 2003 to 2008, 45 percent of new leases were awarded to families. 64 percent of all tenants who have taken over a garden since 2000, are younger than 55 years.

Social functions of allotment gardens

The Office International du Coin de Terre et des Jardins familiaux, existing since 1926 association of more than three million European allotment gardeners, describes the social functions of allotment gardens as follows:

• The public offer allotments a better quality of life in the cities due to noise reduction, dust control, greening, interruption of the buildings, habitat and species protection, habitat connectivity and climatic effects.
• Families provide the allotments a meaningful leisure activity; a horticultural operation and the cost of growing healthy vegetables; the personal experience of sowing, growing, thriving and harvesting of healthy vegetables; a counterweight to live in concrete buildings and asphalt surfaces; Promotion of harmonious interpersonal relationships; a direct contact with nature.
• Children and young people have the allotments to compensate for the often missing Playgrounds; a game and communication field; Spaces of experience in nature and perception of their natural relationships; Lesson in biology.
• Professionals offer the allotments a relaxation from work stress through healthy exercise; an ideal alternative to daily work.
• Unemployment offer the allotments the feeling of being needed and still belong to it; a means to avoid idleness; A grant of fresh vegetables to a minimum price.
• Immigrants provide allotments an opportunity to socialize and to better integrate in the host country (see also " Intercultural Gardens "). In Germany, 7.5 percent of the allotment holders, which are 75,000 Kleingärtner families, a migration background.
• Disabilities provide allotments for a place where he will participate in club life, contacts and cultivates so escapes the insulation; the experience of sowing and plants from growing, thriving and harvesting.
• Seniors provide the allotments a place of the interview and the rest by bringing together people with similar interests; contacts developed over the years; individual self-realization and employment in the third stage of life in your own garden.

In the organized clubs as allotment gardens, there is often a all club members access building, the clubhouse, community center or called in Austria and shelter. It serves mostly the club meetings and holds general tool ready. Often a small inn is housed in it, which is sometimes accessible to club strangers.

The social and ecological functions of the European allotments are now finding their way into development cooperation. Since 2003, several small gardens for the urban poor have been created with the support of German and Belgian partners, for example in the Philippines.

Also for Africa's cities allotment systems are discussed as a strategy of food security and implemented successfully for example in Heilbron ( South Africa).

" Laubenpieper " is a jocular name for the owner of a small garden ( with a " gazebo ").

Ecology in small gardens

Nature and environmental protection play an important role in young gardeners. When asked about the importance of which has its allotment for them personally, this aspect is at the top - ahead of health care and the joy of gardening. For almost all allotment gardeners, it is of course to practice basic rules of natural gardening itself. How to use 97% of rainwater for irrigation, 96 % compost. Is particularly pronounced awareness of semi-natural gardeners in younger allotment gardeners who cultivate their garden since more than ten years. More than one in two of these new allotment gardeners (54%) engaged in growing organic fruits and vegetables, nearly two thirds (61 %) without artificial fertilizers, more than four-fifths (82%) reject chemical pesticides.

This development is supported by the expert advice of the clubs that has won in the past decade increasingly important. 84% of the clubs use this method in order to promote the natural and environmental awareness of its members ( 1997: 75%). Ecological patterns allotments, which are available in every tenth plant and in which ways the natural gardener to clarify that support this process additionally.

Situation in Germany

The term allotment is determined by the § 1 of the Federal Law Garden. Here also defines the concept of small horticultural use. The pachtbaren of the communities land is also referred to as grave country.

Most allotments are organized in associations. The Federation of Small gardener is the Federal Association of German garden eV ( BDG). It represents 20 national associations with a total of 15,000 clubs. In the clubs a total of 967 240 small gardeners are organized. Together with the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development directed the BDG every four years the federal competition "Gardens in Urban Planning" from. This honors special urban, ecological, cultural and social benefits of the garden allotment garden associations.

In Germany there are more than one million small gardens mainly in cities, since there are often people due to lack of space Gartenland missing. Taken together, these have an area of ​​more than 46,000 acres (460 km2). The individual plots are on average 370 square feet in size. The largest allotment association is the "Association of allotment gardeners Ulm eV " in Ulm, founded in 1932. 53.1 hectares on here, there are 1315 plots. The smallest system is the allotment holders association " On Vogelsberg " in Kamenz with 5 parcels.

The average transfer fee for a small garden is 1,900 euros. In large cities, however, this is significantly higher, on average 3,300 euros. Overall, the acquisition costs have decreased by 30 percent since 1990. The average rent for an allotment is 0.17 euros per square meter. In the last 10 years, the lease has increased in Germany by around 30 percent. The amount of the lease also correlates with the city size, the larger the city, the more expensive the garden lease. The membership fee amounts to an average of 29 euros per year. These additional costs come from an average of 276 euros per year for electricity, insurance and local taxes. How much is a small garden in Germany on average 373 euros a year, slightly more than one euro per day.

Especially in the big cities, the demand often exceeds supply - 40 percent of all clubs have long waiting lists (old Länder: 60 percent). In regions which are characterized by population decline, find now but also some gardens no tenants. Overall, a third of the clubs complains about vacancies - among them 2.5 percent of the gardens were already more than a year yet. In section apply per club 10 Neupächter per year, overall it is at 5.2 percent of the parcels to a tenant change.

An essential task of allotments to compensate is to create the compressed blocks of flats and a replacement for the little garden land at residential buildings and lack of green spaces nearby. 82 percent of the allotment gardeners households are renter households, most of whom live in multi-storey blocks of flats (67 percent in the West, 74 percent in the East). The apartment has its own plot near compensate for the lack of green. 84 percent of all gardens are a maximum of five kilometers away from the apartment. 96 percent of all allotment gardeners need a maximum of half an hour to her garden, 60 percent use less than a quarter of an hour.

Garden density in major German cities (ranked by population ) ( Source: Association of German garden eV )

In the new federal states of the so-called grandfathering is often applied (for example, the allowable size of the arbors ), since the former statutory provisions must be considered.

In Nuremberg there is a deciduous Museum, which is managed by the city of Nuremberg association of small gardener.

Situation in Switzerland

1925 Swiss Family Gardener Association was founded by the cantonal federations of Basel, Bern, Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich under the name Swiss allotment holders association as a whole Swiss confederation. The governing body have some 25,000 members and 400 against angeschlossen.1974 garden areas was subdivided into the regions Suisse Romande, Basel, Bern, Bernese Oberland, Central Switzerland and Zurich. The garden areas are provided by cities and towns permanently available and promoted by organized in cooperatives garden tenants in terms of a natural horticulture and managed. The family gardens serve as creative and productive pastime with very integrative character. Tenders will be used actively by the foreign resident population. The Association of Newspapers Garden Friend - Jardin familial published monthly in two languages ​​with a circulation of 25,000 copies. Winterthur has almost 3 " Pünten » 100 inhabitants a high density of such allotments.

Situation in Europe

Small gardens are not only in Germany. 14 national organizations allotment gardeners are organized in the European Union " Office International du Coin de Terre et des Jardins familiaux ".

Number of members in Kleingärtner clubs in Europe

History

Arms gardens

The system of arms gardens on the initiative of well-meaning landlords, factory owners, municipalities and charitable organizations was one of many measures in order to master the early 19th century the arms problem. It had its origin in the sudden increase in population. With a gross domestic product did not increase in the same proportion, the arms issue has been identified as a priority. As one of the first arms gardens plants in Germany today parceled the gardens that were created at the instigation of the Landgrave Carl of Hesse 1797 /98 was still Danish Kappeln apply (so-called Carl gardens). The main objective was to counter hunger and poverty. In 1826 there were already such gardens in 19 cities. 1830 in Kiel followed the "Company voluntary arms Friends " the example. On the " Prüner blow" parcels owned by the city have been designated with the valid to date size of 400 m² and awarded for low rent. Middle of the 19th century in many cities arms gardens and especially in Berlin, the allotments of the Red Cross ( " Red Cross Gardens" ) and the labor movement ( "Workers' Gardens" ) as well as the gardens of the web of Agriculture ( " Railway Gardens" ).

Allotments

Another line of development can be traced back to the eponymous for the later systems Leipzig physician Moritz Schreber. Schreber was not the inventor of the allotment movement, as is commonly still accepted, but only the namesake. It was his colleague, the school director Ernst Innocent Hauschild, goes back to the initiative of the first allotment association. Actually a school club that was created in collaboration with the parents of his students wanted to him but neither school nor Erziehungsverein baptized and so you named it in honor of the late Schreber. In 1865 was celebrated the inauguration of the first " Schreber place " at the Johanna Park in Leipzig, a playground, on the children of factory workers under the supervision of a teacher play and gymnastics could. Up until now the allotment site has nothing to do with gardens.

Only a teacher named Karl Heinrich Company was who established gardens at this place. Initially intended as an additional employment opportunity for the children, the gardens developed rapidly to refuges of the parents or the whole family. From the " kids beds " at the edge of allotment space " family beds ", which was later parceled and fenced. Were From now on they were called " allotments ".

Soon this little garden went over and 1869 in the care of the parents when the initiative is already comprised some 100 parcels, she gave herself a club bylaws. Tool sheds, arbors and fences were erected, and in 1891 14 additional allotment associations had already been founded in Leipzig. The historic gardens, " Dr. Schreber " is now a protected monument and houses since 1996, the German allotment gardeners Museum.

Small garden areas have been in many places reported in Europe in order to enable the population, particularly in the period after the Second World War, a better diet. Due to the housing shortage in Germany after the Second World War, the arbors were often unapproved extended and made ​​habitable in small gardens. This illegal construction were mostly tolerated by the City Council and the residents admitted lifelong residency. It so happens that today, in old small gardens small houses can still be found.