by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
If one would want to measure the success of a movement on the number of those that claim that it cannot possible be any good then the Urban Gardening Movement has during the few years that it has been in existence come a long way already.
Unfortunately there are some writers in newspapers and other media who belittle this to the extent that the state that those who long for the countryside and for gardening and farming should move to the countryside because towns and cities have been sealed, poisoned, and so on. They find it laughable that people are planting Marigolds in front of their doors or tomatoes on their balconies.
But many of those writers have actually no idea, it would seem, what this urban gardening and urban farming is all about. It is not about just growing food for oneself but to actually grow food for the people in the city, and in some cases those urban gardens are created in such a way that everyone can have the food for free (or almost for free) and the movement is growing regardless.
Urban gardening does not mean annexing of ground for private use but free access for all to grow food. It is a fact that the almost 500 urban community garden in Germany, for example, are some of the few places in the gentrified towns where people from different social strata meet in the public realm and interact by creating such gardens and working them.
Those urban community gardens are an innovative contribution to the restructuring of the living together in towns and cities where there is an increasing delineation between the different classes (and I do use the word class/classes here deliberately) which produces a great many risks for our living together in those spaces.
While growing produce for use by all, in community gardens “managed” and worked by all, by people from different strata and classes in the city, is one part of it such gardens also and especially aim to overcome the borders that have been created between people of different groups in society, in our increasingly gentrified towns and especially cities.
Through gardening together in reclaimed public spaces collective forms are created that can be seen as part of an ever strengthening commons movement even and especially in our towns and cities. Those forms could be the basis for new political framework to change society and all for the better.
Though not everyone may be realizing the potential that the urban gardening movement has to change the political structure and through it society as a whole. The powers-that-be, however, are well aware of its potential and thus use the media to belittle those that participate in this, whether in the form of community urban gardens or simply by trying to be somewhat more autark by turning their front and back yards and their balconies, etc., into spaces in which to grow at least some of their food.
People who are independent – to some extent – from the markets and people who join in community of whatever kind are perceived as a threat by the powers-that-be and thus every attempt possible is being made to discredit them in they eyes of the majority not as yet involved.
© 2017
