Design, construction, implementation, amortization, maintenance and replacement.

In community gardens, it is also important that the raised beds are evenly matched, the same size and shape. Everyone will have the same growing space, there is no debate about whether someone has a larger or smaller bed. The garden will not be uniform, commune-like, because each bed will be cultivated differently, planted differently, no two community garden beds will be the same.

In community gardens, the high beds are always cultivated by the same family, as long as they are members of the garden. We don’t change bed cultivators every year. If an urban gardener cultivates the same bed for years, he will pay attention to the maintenance of the bed and the quality of the soil in it. If we change the bed user every year, he will feel less ownership of it, he will not take care of it.

Positioning of high beds

It’s important to have a landscape architect design the garden, who will pay attention to the vegetation, the distance between beds, the walking surfaces. Every garden has an overall picture, and there will be central points in the garden, such as the community space, water taps, the area around the garden gate, etc. All the elements of the community garden need to be harmonised to create a well-functioning garden.

Raised bed designs

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The distance between beds.

The experience is that there should be at least 1 metre / 3 ft between beds, partly to accommodate the lawnmower and for safety reasons, and partly to avoid shading the tall plants in the next beds.

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Size of high beds

My gardens usually have 6-7-8 square metres of beds, mainly because in a 1000 square metre garden you need to be able to fit 25-30 raised beds, communal space and all the garden accessories. That’s how many beds can comfortably fit.

Beds should be 1.5 metres wide. This is important! Since you are not stepping into the beds, the arm’s length is the relevant distance, the reach-in distance. A width of 1.5 metres helps to cultivate from all sides. You can reach into the whole plot of the bed, for example to clear weeds. For the same reason, it is important that the bed can be walked around and cultivated from all sides.

The beds can be rectangular, but they can also be U-shaped or any arrangement the landscape architect can think of. For beds that are not the usual shape, make sure that you also keep the bed tidy, making it easy to mow or weed the lawn.

Material of raised bed

Most bed frames are made of wood, but they can also be built from demolished bricks, metal or recycled materials, or even prefabricated raised bed frames. In the Böszi Garten, the bed frames are made from pallets. This is also a good solution if you can get it cheaply.

Of the woods, acacia seems to be the most durable, but you can use pine, or more expensive denser woods, or even recycled woods. Be careful that if you use recycled materials, they are not contaminated.

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Insulation of the raised bed

Be sure to treat the planks as well as possible against moisture before building the bed. Linseed oil, various stains, possibly tar. This should not be spared and should be repeated every 1-2 years, at least on visible surfaces. The problem is that the wet soil comes into direct contact with the wooden planks, so the wood material rots very quickly. Usually the inside of the bed wall rots and after 6-8 years the whole raised bed needs to be replaced.

Recently, we have started to use thick waterproof plastic sheeting in the construction industry, used to waterproof the foundations of buildings and to provide excellent separation of the wooden bed frame from the wet ground. This solution extends the life of bedding by levels.

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Shadowing

In recent years, UV radiation has become so intense in summer that it can destroy plants, so it is worth putting Rascher netting over the bed. This is an industrial mesh, used on building sites or to make potato and onion sacks. It allows water to pass through, but it catches ice and, above all, it filters the sunlight to some extent, so that the plants do not burn in periods of heat and high UV radiation. Wooden poles are placed in the corners of the bed and the netting is stretched between them.

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Filling of raised beds, layering.

It is advisable to fill the beds in layers. Tree branches on the bottom, twigs on top, then dry leaves, grass clippings, topsoil, compost and topsoil again. Over time, the bottom layers will start to compost, “blending” our topsoil. You should expect that this topsoil will become densified in the first few seasons, and you will need to ensure that the topsoil is refilled.

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The areas around the beds

Whatever the size of the bed, the gardener will soon start to expand. This is what I call “land hunger”, and it is worth putting a stop to it very quickly, although it is impossible. Gardeners start planting outside the bed, in the nearby area of the bed, which takes away from the walking surface, makes it difficult to mow the walking surfaces, and I think it is also accident-prone, because there are so many children in gardens, they can easily trip over these plantings. It is worth discussing this together at the garden meeting and deciding together on the method and quantity of planting.

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Blueprints and implementation

Böszi garden beds. The beds are made of pallets with strong insulation and Rascher mesh on top. In the third picture you can clearly see that the bedding is covered on the inside with plastic waterproofing sheeting, so that the wet soil does not come into contact with the wood. It will make the bed more durable.

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In the Békási Garden we also used U-shaped beds. This created a compact, well cultivated bed. The garden is now 12 years old and the beds are starting to deteriorate. The community can renew 2-3 beds a year, so over time the entire bed stock will be replaced.

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Finally

If you are establishing and building the garden in partnership with the local municipality, it is worth discussing with the municipality’s representatives to calculate all amortisation and include this cost in the annual green space maintenance costs.

Community gardens, in a sense parks, are urban green spaces. They may be cultivated by NGOs, but they are still part of the green spaces of the district or city. A smart municipality is one that helps communities to maintain a garden without too great a financial sacrifice. Replacing beds is usually beyond the financial tolerance of gardens, and municipalities should take this into account.

Tervezés, építés, kivitelezés, amortizáció, karbantartás és csere.

A közösségi kertek legfontosabb eleme a magas ágyás. A városi kertekben általában magas ágyást kell használni, mert a városi talaj szinte soha nem alkalmas élelmiszer növények termesztésére, másrészt könnyebb művelni a növényeket.

A közösségi kerteknél az is fontos, hogy egységesek, egyforma nagyok és egyforma alakúak legyenek a magas ágyások. Mindenkinek ugyanakkora termőterülete lesz, nincs vita, hogy valakinek nagyobb, vagy kisebb az ágyása. A kert nem lesz egységes, kommunaszerű, mert minden ágyást más művel, másként ülteti be, nincs két egyforma közösségi kert ágyás.

A közösségi kertekben a magas ágyásokat mindig ugyanaz a család műveli, egészen addig, amíg a kert tagjai. Nem cserélgetjük az ágyások művelőit évente. Ha egy városi kertész éveken keresztül ugyanazt az ágyást műveli, akkor oda fog figyelni az ágyás karbantartására, a benne levő föld minőségére. Ha évente cserélgetjük az ágyás használóját, kevésbé fogja magáénak érezni, nem fogja gondját viselni.

A magas ágyások elhelyezése

Fontos, hogy tájépítész tervezze a kertet, ő oda fog figyelni a benapozottságra, az ágyások közötti távolságra, a járófelületekre. Minden kertnek van egy összképe, illetve kialakulnak súlypontok a kertben, például a közösségi tér, a vízvételi pontok, a kertkapu környéke, stb. A közösségi kert minden elemét összhangba kell hozni, hogy egy jól működő kertet kapjunk.

Ágyástervek

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Az ágyások közötti távolság.

A tapasztalat az, hogy legalább 1 méter / 3 ft távolság legyen az ágyások között, részben, hogy a fűnyíró elférjen, illetve biztonsági szempontok is számítanak, harmadrészt ne árnyékolják egymást az ágyásokban magasra növő növények.

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A magas ágyások mérete

A kertjeimben általában 6-7-8 négyzetméteresek az ágyások, Ez főleg abból adódik, hogy az 1000 négyzetméteres kertben el kell tudni helyezni 25-30 darab emelt ágyást, a közösségi teret és az összes kert tartozékot. Ennyi ágyás fér el kényelmesen.

Az ágyások legyenek 1,5 méter szélesek. Ez fontos! Mivel az ágyásokba nem lépünk bele, így a kartávolság a mérvadó, a benyúlási távolság. A 1,5 méter szélesség a két oldalról való művelést segíti. Az ágyás teljes területére be tudunk nyúlni, például gazolni. Ugyanezért fontos az is, hogy az ágyás körbejárható, minden oldalról művelhető legyen.  

Az ágyások lehetnek téglalap alakúak, de lehetnek U alakúak is, vagy bármilyen elrendezés, amit a tájépítész kitalál. A megszokottól eltérő alakú ágyásoknál arra figyeljünk, hogy az ágyás körül is rendet kell tartanunk, legyen könnyű a gyep nyírása, vagy a gazolás.

A magas ágyás anyaga

Legtöbbször fából készülnek az ágyáskeretek, de lehet építeni bontott téglából, esetleg fémből, vagy újrahasznosított anyagokból, sőt lehet kapni előre gyártott emelt ágyás kereteket is. De például a Böszi kertben raklapokból készültek az ágyások. Ez is egy jó megoldás, ha sikerül olcsón beszerezni.

A faanyagok közül az akác tűnik a legtartósabbnak, de használhatunk fenyőt, vagy drágább tömörebb faanyagokat, esetleg újrahasznosított faanyagokat. Figyeljünk oda, hogy ha újrahasznosított anyagokat használunk, az ne legyen szennyezett.

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A magas ágyás szigetelése

Mindenképpen az ágyásépítés előtt a lehető legjobban kezelni kell a deszkákat a nedvesség ellen. Lenolaj, különböző pácok, esetleg kátrány. Ezen nem érdemes spórolni, sőt 1-2 évente meg kell ismételni, legalább a látszó felületeken. A probléma az, hogy a nedves föld közvetlenül érintkezik a fa deszkákkal, így nagyon gyorsan rothadásnak indul a fa anyaga. Általában belülről rothad az ágyás fala, és 6-8 év után az egész ágyáskert cserére szorul.

Az utóbbi időben kezdtük használni az építőiparban használt vastag vízzáró műanyag fóliát, épületek alapozásának vízszigetelésére használják, és kiválóan elválasztja a fa ágyáskeretet a nedves földtől. Ez a megoldás nagyságrendekkel meghosszabbítja az ágyások élettartamát.

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Árnyékolás

Az utóbbi években annyira megerősödött nyaranta az UV sugárzás, hogy tönkre tudja tenni a növényeket, ezét az ágyás fölé érdemes Rascher hálót kifeszíteni. Ez egy ipari háló, építkezéseken használják, vagy krumplis és hagymás zsákokat készítenek belőle. Átengedi a vizet, viszont a jeget megfogja, és főleg valamelyest megszűri a napfényt, nem égnek meg a növények a kánikula és magas UV sugárzás időszakában. Az ágyás sarkaiba faoszlopokat állítunk, és ezek között feszítjük ki a hálót.

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Az ágyások feltöltése, rétegezés.

Érdemes rétegzett módon feltölteni az ágyásokat. Legalulra faágak, arra gallyak, majd száraz falevél, fűnyesedék, erre kerül a termőföld, komposzt és újra termőföld. Idővel az alsó rétegek elkezdenek komposztálódni, „összeérik” a termőtalajunk. Arra érdemes számítani, hogy ez a feltöltés az első szezonokban tömörödni fog, gondoskodni kell a termőföld utántöltésről.

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Az ágyások körüli területek

Bármekkora is az ágyás, a kertész rövid időn belül elkezd terjeszkedni. Ezt nevezem „földéhségnek”, ennek érdemes nagyon gyorsan gátat vetni, bár igazából lehetetlen. A kertészek elkezdenek az ágyáson kívül, az ágyás közvetlen környezetében ültetni, ami elvesz a járófelületből, megnehezíti a járófelületek fűnyírását, szerintem balesetveszélyes is, mert nagyon sok a gyerek a kertekben, simán elbotlanak ezekben a kiültetésekben. Ezt érdemes közösen megtárgyalni a kertgyűlésen és közösen dönteni a kiültetések módjáról és mennyiségéről.

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Ágyástervek és megvalósítás

Böszi kert ágyások. Raklapból készültek az ágyások, erős szigeteléssel és Rascher hálóval a tetején. A harmadik képen jól látszik, hogy az ágyás belülről, műanyag vízszigetelő fóliával borítják, így a nedves föld nem érintkezik a faanyaggal. Tartósabb lesz az ágyás.

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Békási kert ágyások

A Békási kertben is U alakú ágyásokat használtunk. Ez egy kompakt, jól művelhető ágyást reményezett. A kert már 12 éves és az ágyások kezdenek tönkre menni. A közösség évente 2-3 ágyás tud megújítani, így idővel a teljes ágyás állomány kicserélődik.

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Végezetül

Amennyiben a helyi önkormányzattal közösen alapítjuk és építjük a kertet, érdemes megbeszélni az önkormányzat képviselőivel, hogy számoljanak valamennyi amortizációval, és ezt a költséget építsék bele a zöldfelület fenntartási éves költségekbe.

A közösségi kertek, egyfajta parkok, városi zöldfelületek. Lehet, hogy civilek művelik, ettől függetlenül részei a kerület, vagy város zöldfelületeinek. Okos az az önkormányzat, amelyik segíti a közösségeket, hogy túl nagy anyagi áldozatok nélkül tudják fenntartani a kertet. Az ágyások pótlása általában meghaladja a kertek pénzügyi tűrőképességét, jó ha az önkormányzatok ezzel számolnak.

Community building is not simple. I see many gardens having problems with it. Over the past few years, I have realized that the best way to develop a community is to work together on projects, such as building something. A culture of collaboration develops through completing tasks together. For example, we built a pergola in the Toldy garden.

We should build a shading system over the community space because the summers are too hot. We first considered sun sails, but then we decided on pergolas. Organizing and building it was a real community effort, and not only that. It was a family project: the girls cooked pepperpot and tended to the flower and herb gardens. It ended up being a very productive day.

I find that one of the best ways to build a community is to build something together, organize an activity, and do it together. This could be building a pergola, cooking together, or tidying up the land we share.

Yesterday was a very good experience for everyone who was there. For example, we learned each other’s names.

I photographed the whole day. Here is the process:

A közösségi tér fölé árnyékolót kell építeni, túl melegek a nyarak. Először napvitorlákra gondoltunk, aztán inkább a pergolára esett a választás. Igazi közösségi munka volt a szervezés és az építés, de nem csak az. A lányok főztek egy jó paprikás krumplit, közben megcsinálták a virágoskertet és a fűszerkertet. nagyon produktív nap volt.

Azt veszem észre, hogy a közösségépítés egyik legjobb módja, ha építünk valamit, ha van megoldandó feladat, amit meg kell szervezni és együtt kell elvégezni. Legyen az pergola építés, vagy közös főzés, vagy a közös művelésű földek rendbe tétele.

A tegnapi nap nagyon jó élmény volt mindenkinek, aki ott volt, például egymás neveit is megtanultuk. 🙂

A költségeket a Kispesti Önkormányzat Civil Pályázaton nyert pénzből finanszíroztuk. Az Önkormányzat egyik leghatékonyabban felhasznált pénze, szerintem…

Végigfotóztam a napot, itt a folyamat.

Érdekesen hideg volt a május, a növények nem növekedtek úgy mint kellene, ettől függetlenül a kertek szépek, jól alakulnak.

Három galériát csináltam a hónap eseményeiből.

Toldy kert.

A kert nagyon szép, rendezett. Ez az első igazi szezon, az ágyásokat nagyon szépen művelik. A hónap közepén iskolás csoport jött a kertbe, tanulmányi kirándulás volt

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A Böszi kert is szép most. Részt vettünk a Budapest100 eseményen. Részben nyitott kert program volt, másrészt a kerület helytörténész tartott előadást a telekről, amelyen a kert van most, illetve én beszéltem a kert alapításáról és az azóta eltelt évekről. A kerítésre csináltunk egy nyomtatott molinó sorozatot a telek és a kert történetéről. Jól sikerült a molinó. A kertbe is jöttek látogatók.

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Májusban tartotta az Aranykatica kert a 12. születésnapját. Egy tucat év. Jó sok. Sokat változott a kert, (igazából a kerteken kezdem lemérni, hogy mennyit öregedek. Mintha tegnap lett volna az Aranykatica kert alapítása, ehhez képest már 12 éve.)

Sokat változott a kert, jó a csapat, biztató az egész. Nagyon jó partikat szoktak abban a kertben tartani, ez is egy ilyen esemény volt.

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Proposal for the Garden Rules

There are many Community Garden Rules on the internet, and this version has been refined over fourteen years into the one you read here. It seems over-regulated, but since the real owner of the land and garden is the local authority, everything should be clear and regulated.

It’s also very important that gardens are not held together by garden rules, but rather by unwritten norms, personal relationships, seasons lived together, the sense of community that is really important.

The Garden Regulations are not the same as the Garden Contract. The Garden Contract contains the legal terms and conditions for the use of the bed, the Garden Regulations are more for cooperation and garden management.

The Garden Rules, however long, cannot cover all aspects of the garden’s operation, which is why garden meetings and competent garden management are important.

The Garden Rules should be posted on the garden notice board for all to read, both garden members and visitors to the garden.

1. General expectations

1.1 The rules are intended to make the operation and use of the Garden clear and understandable to everyone and apply to all members of the community. The Community Garden Rules apply universally to all users of the Garden and may only be changed or modified by community decision.

1.2. No political activity is allowed in the garden. The garden does not engage in direct political activity, is independent of political parties and does not provide or receive financial support from them.

1.3 Members of the garden must conduct themselves in a manner that enhances the reputation of the garden.

1.4. All forms of cooperation between Garden Users are important and should be encouraged.

2. Rules for the use of the Garden:

2.1 The Garden must first and foremost be a safe place for both Garden Users and their guests. The introduction or use of dangerous objects or hazardous materials in the Garden is prohibited. No smoking or consumption of alcohol is permitted in the Garden. The rules of normal social interaction must be followed in the Garden.

2.2. All Plots have the same area, and each Garden User may only cultivate one Plot. Any resident of the District who accepts and respects the rules of the garden and the expectations of the community may become a member of the garden.

2.3 The Garden Fee is used to cover the costs of running the garden: the purchase of tools, seeds, seedlings, etc. Spending must be voted on by the community. Payment of the user fee is due by 31 March each year. Non-payers are automatically excluded after a grace period of one month.

2.4. Each Garden User is responsible for his/her own garden, for the gardening work: planting, watering, weeding, harvesting, and for the maintenance of the common areas of the garden.

2.5. All beds shall be maintained as often as possible on a weekly basis or at least once every 3 weeks. If the Garden User is unable to cultivate his/her garden, he/she must arrange for a competent substitute, in consultation with community members in particular. Any plot that is not maintained for more than 2 month can be charged and transferred to a new Garden User. If the Garden User wishes to terminate his right to use the plot during the growing season, he/she must notify the Garden Manager.

2.6. The right to use the plot is not transferable or permanently assignable.

2.7. The Garden may only grow plants for personal use, and therefore the Garden User may use and harvest the benefits of the Garden for his/her own use and for the use of his/her family members. It is forbidden to sell the produce of the Community Garden!

2.8. No artificial, chemical substances of any kind should be used in the garden, neither for weed control nor for other garden operations. Only and exclusively “organic” certified products may be used.

2.9. No poisonous or narcotic plants may be planted in the Garden. Trees, shrubs and weeds that have been dispersed in the garden by birds or wind-borne plant seeds must be removed from the garden.

2.10. The Garden User may only cultivate his/her own plot, harvest only his/her own crops, respect other people’s plots at all times, and may not touch other people’s plots without specific request.

2.11. At the end of the growing season, all Garden Users are responsible for clearing their plot and its immediate surroundings in preparation for the winter rest period. The same rule applies to the common areas and the Garden as a whole.

2.12. If any Garden User’s plants are attacked by a contagious disease, they must be removed from the bed immediately and other Garden Users must be informed of the potential danger. Infected plants must not be composted and must be removed from the Garden as soon as possible.

2.13. All Garden Users must remove all non-green waste (rubbish) from the Garden. No waste bins may be used in the garden.

2.14. Mailing list, Closed Facebook group: the rules of normal communication must be particularly respected in the internet-based communication of the garden community, the anonymity of the internet must not lead to uncultured behaviour.

3. Community areas, common activities

3.1. Each garden member is responsible for the overall appearance of the garden, and everyone must do their part to maintain it.All garden users are responsible for the continuous maintenance, care and cleaning of the common areas outside the bed throughout the season.

3.2. For the tasks to be carried out during the year (mowing the lawn, watering the common areas, maintaining the herb garden, tending the flower beds, etc.), a task list should be drawn up, in which the garden members undertake the work jointly – on a voluntary basis.  Each garden member should take on tasks according to his or her ability and capacity, in equal proportions.

3.3. Communal areas in the community garden: the grass garden, the flower garden areas, the community space, trees and shrubs, which are maintained under the guidance of a “responsible person”, with the involvement of the community.

3.4. The garden members are required to take part in the work once a month (2 hours per month), and if they are absent, they must do the remaining work. If a garden member fails to participate regularly in the gardening work for reasons for which he/she is responsible, he/she may be expelled from the garden by a majority decision of the gardening partners.

3.5. In the garden, composting should be a shared responsibility. Each plot will share equally in the finished compost. By common agreement, household green waste may also be composted, but the types and types of composting must be agreed in advance between the Garden Users.

3.6. Each Garden User has his/her own key to the Garden and can enter the Garden whenever he/she wants.

3.7. On finishing gardening work, all tools must be returned to their place in a clean and usable condition. The Garden must always be locked when leaving. All water taps in the Garden must be turned off on leaving.

4. Garden coordination, garden management

4.1. The coordination and management of the Garden is carried out by the Garden Manager or the Garden Coordination Group, elected by a community vote. The community authorises the management team to take tasks, organise events and garden meetings and make decisions about the Garden. Each year, the Coordination Group is required to report on the functioning of the garden, the work of the community, their tasks, and our future plans. 

4.2. The garden treasurer is obliged to report and account for the available funds every year. The accounting of expenses is presented at the end of the harvest season. Every year the community votes on the amount of the garden fee.

4.3. The Garden Manager or Garden Coordination Group is required to organise a Garden Users’ Meeting (Garden Meeting) several times a year, and a Garden Builders’ Day at least twice a year, at the beginning and end of the season.

4.4. The garden manager can call a meeting at any time to take joint decisions, or any garden member can call an extraordinary garden meeting.

4.5 Bulletin Board: a shared space for all kinds of information, messages and suggestions about the affairs of the Garden. Political advertisements and promotions are forbidden.

5. Events, children and visitors

5.1. Children may only be in the Garden under adult supervision. Guests invited by the Garden User must be aware of the rules of the Garden and may not touch or damage the beds of others. The Garden User shall be jointly and severally responsible for the conduct of its guests as its own.

5.2. The community garden may organise events such as cultural and leisure activities, garden parties, celebrations of community garden holidays, open days, educational and demonstration activities, and other events supported and approved by the community.

5.3. Participation in events, either as a visitor or as an organiser, is voluntary for the members of the garden.

5.4. Family celebrations can also be organised in the community garden with the knowledge and permission of the community, for example a child’s birthday. Invited guests must be aware of the garden rules, they cannot cause any harm.

The last in a series of articles on urban – community gardens, this one is less about plants and growing seasons and more about the organisation of the garden community and the role of garden leaders.

All community gardens need to be managed, garden managers are needed, and in many gardens there is a garden coordination team. An unmanaged garden will not work, everything will be in disarray, the garden and the community itself will decline very quickly. Most communal gardens fall into this mistake, they trust in the ‘power of community’ but fail to consider that if there is no thoughtful management, no planned season, the whole thing will miss the mark and die. Somehow the garden community needs to be understood as a company, an organisation. Many different people, many different skills come together, and they need to be guided in the same direction, organised and coordinated in the day-to-day running of the garden.

Importantly, it is not the garden manager’s job to do everything himself, but rather to create the conditions for the community to do the garden tasks themselves, efficiently, quickly and cheerfully. The garden manager is more of an organiser, more of a coordinator and of course he or she does some of the physical work.

Although the garden is ready, it has had a few successful seasons, but that doesn’t mean it is functional on its own, it needs a person, or perhaps a small group, to think through the season, call the garden meetings, communicate with the local authority, keep track of the garden’s assets, manage the garden’s internal and external communications. The goal is always to have a successful and relaxed season for the garden that year, to achieve success at community and individual level.

The one-third rule

A broad generalisation about all community gardens is that a third of the members are active and participate in all events, another third only attend the main events, and there is a third who are rarely seen, sometimes or not at all involved in the life of the garden. For them, the only thing that matters is their beds, or worse, their beds become deserted and weedy by mid-season, which is a serious problem, and in a garden where all the garden members have the same size bed, neglected beds are very noticeable. In this case, the garden leader should step in and ask the neglected gardener to give back his bed so that a new, more active member can be selected by the community from the waiting list. Fortunately, every garden has a long waiting list, it is easy to bring new members into the garden. The garden by-laws set out how neglectful gardeners can be removed from the garden, partly by written warning, partly by verbal warning and finally, if they do not respond, the community can vote them out of membership. This step is not to be neglected, it is better to have a new, enthusiastic garden member to replace the neglectful gardener.

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There are situations when the garden manager has to take “firm” action. There are cases when a garden member is found to be unfit to exist in a community, his behaviour, his habitus make him unfit for community life. These are the community destroyers. Often they are unable to communicate with other gardeners in the right tone of voice, or without the approval of the community they do something in the garden that is bad for everyone or detracts from the overall image of the garden. In such cases, the garden manager has to step in and either persuade or, as a last resort, vote the person out of the garden. There have been examples of gardeners who have been found to have alcohol problems, and it is not acceptable for a gardener to stagger around the garden with many young children present. There were also examples of the garden partner’s personality making him unfit to participate in the community, causing strife, destroying the community, inadequate personal communication with others, and such a person needs to be urgently removed from the garden.

Communication problems very often come up in e-mail conversations. In addition to the keyboard, some people indulge in far more than they would in face-to-face communication, and this must be stopped immediately, not allowed to escalate, because in the long run it has a devastating effect. Don’t be afraid to put someone out of the garden, do it calmly, without offence, give them the opportunity to retreat with their head held high.

New garden members in the garden

Each garden has a long waiting list so we can select the applicants. It’s worth inviting applicants to the garden, several at once, and telling them what garden membership means. Many people have an unrealistic view of how community gardens work, there is a lot of idealism, it is better to be clear from the start what the tasks, responsibilities and benefits will be for the new garden member. Some people back away from signing up when they learn that the garden involves shared responsibilities, not just a bed to garden in. When choosing a new garden member, pay attention to the integration of the new garden member into the garden community. Introduce the new members at the next garden meeting, put them on the mailing list, give them all the knowledge and good advice they need to integrate easily and quickly into the garden community.

The tasks of a garden manager:

• The most important tasks of a community garden leader include: involving members, delegating tasks and responsibilities, and resolving conflicts.
• A key role is to coordinate, build community, create and maintain stability and cohesion.
• Organises garden meetings and garden events.
• Represents the garden in a defined capacity, liaises with the designated unit of the municipality.
• The garden manager is responsible for enforcing the garden rules and the house rules.
• Coordinate garden communications, external and internal coordination together.
• Overseeing the garden’s membership fees, leases and budget.
• Keeping records of the garden’s financial assets.
• The goal to be achieved by the garden manager is the optimal operation of the garden, achieving long-term sustainability.

Culture of cooperation

One of the most important tasks of the garden manager or garden coordination team is to develop a culture of cooperation. All members should be able to work and associate with others, making decisions together about the future of the garden, participating in the physical maintenance of the garden, and being part of the community. The success of a community garden is the result of the cooperation of its members. Nature will do its work independently.

What makes a good garden manager?

Be a good gardener, but more importantly, be able to communicate with a wide range of people, Often retired teachers and people used to management make the best garden managers. Garden managers need to be able to deal with conflict quickly and effectively. Garden managers must have time to organise and volunteer for the garden.

A good garden leader can run a garden meeting well. Garden meetings are a forum for discussing garden business, and effective and to the point meetings are essential. It is interesting to note that during the Covid epidemic we held online garden meetings and they were not effective. Much better to be in person. Garden meetings should be held a few more times a year: beginning of season garden meetings, end of season garden meetings, and during the year if there is a need.

The garden manager must be able to harmonise different ideas and expectations, and most importantly, to promote community decision-making in all cases. It is not the garden manager who decides on the major issues of the garden, but rather coordinates the community to make important decisions themselves and helps and organises their implementation.

Community garden management should be the responsibility of one person for the first season, because too much participation will only hinder an effective learning process. However, for subsequent seasons, it is better to establish a garden coordination group. One person is likely to have too many tasks to manage the garden, but by dividing the work into different sub-tasks, you will make your job easier.

Keeping the gardens working.

We build community gardens for decades. The only garden I have had that I know of that was built as a temporary garden is the Böszi Garden, which was built on a construction site and will be discontinued when the economic situation allows the planned municipal investment to get underway. The gardeners have taken note of this situation, so they experience each season as a gift and hope that they might have another season. At the same time, my oldest garden, the Első Kis-Pesti Kert, completed its 12th season this year, has become an important part of Kispest’s life and the neighbourhood over the past dozen years, and there seems no reason why anything should prevent it from continuing to thrive for decades to come.

In 2012, I was in New York for the American Community Garden Association conference and we visited several community gardens in New York. Some of them were 40-50 years old. No one remembered who the founders were, none of the people who started urban gardening back then were alive. And yet they still exist perfectly well, with gardening revived season after season. It took the city to accept the benefits of these urban gardens and start actively supporting them. The logic is quite simple, community-maintained urban gardens are infinitely cheaper for the city than park maintenance, but they also have a much higher biological value, are more permanent, are free from vandalism, are an ornament to the neighbourhood, host many events of importance to the district, participate in the environmental education of youth and, most importantly, create active neighbourhood communities. A global city is made up of many of these small communities.

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Once these community gardens are established on municipal land, as a municipal investment, smart municipalities will include the gardens in the district’s so-called green space management plan. This means that the municipality cannot let the garden go, saying that it is ready, it is now cultivated and maintained by the gardeners. Every asset has its amortization period, it deteriorates, it decays, it needs to be replaced. Here, bed frames are the main expense. After having established 9 gardens, I have to say that there is no really good solution for raised bed borders. They are depreciating assets. Most of the time we use wooden bed frames, but no matter how much we protect and treat them, they start to decay and rot after 5-6 years. Standing outdoors in winter and summer, in sunshine and winter frost, they will inevitably break down after a while.

We can build the beds, for example with bricks or concrete blocks, but the cost of building these is unrealistically high, and is usually rejected by planners and local government representatives during construction. The clever municipality will include a depreciation cost for the community garden, from which the gardens can buy the timber needed for renovation and then rebuild the deteriorated beds themselves. This is community work, an unavoidable task.

Community gardens are getting richer every year. It’s almost unbelievable how many varieties of plants can grow in these gardens. From the second to the third season, the flowers will become more and more numerous, the fruit trees more and more numerous. Groups from the schools and kindergartens in the area will get used to the garden, they will have biology classes in the garden, the inhabitants of the area will like the garden because it is beautiful, because it shows a different face every day, because it is interesting and good. One of the best feelings is when strangers from the neighbourhood call me and say, “Nice garden, congratulations. That is success.

In this section, I will try to put the process of implementing the community gardens in chronological order, with a focus on the events and tasks of the first season. Of course, each garden is unique and their implementation is different, but the main milestones are the same. The other important element is that only municipal gardens will be discussed.

December – January

The community garden is a joint project with the municipality, on municipal land and as a municipal investment, we inevitably have to adapt to the way the administration and the organisation works. You have to be able to wait out the bureaucratic process until everything is in its right place. The most important thing is to budget for the creation of the community garden and to allocate capital to it when the municipal budget is drawn up for next year. This requires a budget, often asks for feasibility studies and references. This is done before the end of the year and approved by the municipal assembly. Then a contract can be signed with the municipality, for the establishment of the garden, for the management of the garden, all this takes a lot of time, but this is where the process starts.

Community gardener recruitment. The first public forum, location and date should be announced. Because we are organizing neighborhood communities it is best to recruit prospective garden members from the neighborhood, it is worth posting the event in the doorways of neighboring houses. An inspiring presentation should be prepared for the community forum, so that people can see what to expect, what will happen, and how they can get involved in the garden’s creation. We’ll start registering people from the first session and set up a closed mailing list where we can keep in touch. Don’t be surprised if not all the beds are sold out the first time, by the time the garden is ready there will be a long waiting list.

February- Garden meetings, training, launch of the design process

We usually hold two-weekly garden meetings and training sessions, during which we come up with a name for the garden, possibly an emblem, discuss garden contracts, garden rules, vote on the bed rent, and elect a garden treasurer. Meanwhile, let’s start the garden design with concept plans. Invite landscape architects, or perhaps students in a university course week, to prepare concept plans. It makes sense to work with relatively short deadlines, as we want to open the garden in early summer. In the meantime, gardening education will be launched. The gardening course will be four classroom sessions, and after the garden is complete, the learning will continue outdoors.

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March

By this time, the design concept for the garden has been developed and the landscape architect is working on the final design. It is worth inviting him to a garden meeting where he/she will explain how the garden will look, introduce the plans, and give comments. In the meantime, gardener education is being provided along the lines of the theme.

April

The garden design is finished, the contractor starts building the garden. It’s worth inviting the contractor to a garden meeting to explain the main steps of the garden construction and to discuss who can participate in what work. The aim is that the community that is being formed should also take part in the construction and running of the garden, so that they develop a stronger, deeper bond with the garden. The tasks of maintaining the garden will be talked through, and everyone will have to take a part. We start planning community events for the season. In the meantime, gardening and compost education is going on. Composting is a separate science, so it’s worth setting up a separate training session.

The construction of the garden should be carried out and supervised by the municipality. It is too big a task to be undertaken without competence. The physical construction of a garden is a profession, if you don’t know how to do it, don’t do it, you can lose big.

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May

By May, the garden is usually ready, beds are assigned at the garden meeting, garden contracts are signed by all gardeners, garden keys are handed out and the first season’s “bed rental fee” is paid to the garden treasurer. Each garden has expenses, seeds to be bought, common garden tools, paints, watering cans and printing costs, which are funded from the common treasury. All expenses are discussed at the garden meeting and approved by the community.) Each gardener is given a key to the garden, everyone goes to the garden when they feel like it or have time. Many like to garden early in the morning, others after work. The gardens are basically locked, there have been occasions when an unwitting visitor has accidentally caused damage, so the garden gate is usually locked even when there are gardeners inside, but interested visitors are let in and shown around the garden.

By May, the gardeners’ bed-planting designs will be ready, and the seedlings will be planted at home. We cannot grow enough seedlings to fill the bed at home, so it is worth ordering seedlings from specialised companies. In the meantime, we will also discuss planting the herb garden and flower beds. The aim is to have everything ready for planting day, so that everyone knows what we are going to do and where it will go.

Planting day takes place in May. This is one of the most important events in the garden establishment process. This is when the seedlings are put in the ground, the herb garden is planted and the season starts. Gardening Day is a milestone in the life of the garden, it is when the first growing season really begins. Planting day is usually held on a Saturday or Sunday, so be prepared for it to be at least a 4-6 hour occupation. A botanist will help you get the planting right.

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June

The plants are growing nicely and we are getting ready to build the garden furniture. Used pallets, purchased wood, but definitely have the gardeners build the tables and benches, possibly composting frames too. This is a weekend activity, you can build everything in a day or two if there are enough of us and tools. Also, prepare a fire pit, a sandpit for the kids, invent and furnish a community space. The tools will start to accumulate in the garden, storage for them will have to be figured out. In the first season, a large wooden box that we build ourselves is enough; later on, the community usually builds a proper tool storage or receives a subsidy. Always make sure that the garden looks good, that there is no clutter and that inappropriate things are not put in the garden.

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July

In July, we usually hold the grand opening of the garden. So far, there has been a lot of press coverage of the garden in the district, the project has been featured in the district’s newspapers and TV, and the opening is the culmination of this. The mayor, the members of the council, everyone who had something to do with the garden’s creation, all come. The garden members bring cakes, cookies, maybe we can make something delicious on the fireplace. There are speeches, but more interesting is the garden itself and the community, who by this time have dressed the garden up quite a bit, the beds are starting to look nice. Close cooperation with the municipal press office is important. The community garden is a rewarding subject and is often featured in the local newspaper. In the coming years, the gardens tend to celebrate the garden’s birthday, an event very similar to the opening ceremony.

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During the summer there are fewer garden meetings, everyone is in the garden anyway, we get together when we are building something or having a garden party. And of course after work, it’s nice to get out for a little watering, weeding, and conversation. It’s a way to wind down for the day. The first crops appear, and the first pests appear. Many gardeners go on holiday, arranging with remaining gardeners to water each other’s beds. In the community gardens, we don’t touch each other’s beds, that’s the rule, but we will help a fellow gardener on holiday with watering if asked. To help with pest identification and control, a botanist will come to the garden and explain and demonstrate proper control.

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August

This is the time when the harvest begins to come in droves and when most people go on holiday. Be sure to have people watching the beds, helping with irrigation. It is worthwhile to do a garden statistic in the first season, with all bed owners measuring and keeping a record of their crops. This tends to be very interesting because when you add up the final results, it turns out that the community garden produces a surprising amount of crops. In 2023, according to the garden statistics, the Böszi garden produced almost a tonne of vegetables, a surprising amount, and if you add the shop prices, you end up with a very substantial sum, not to mention the quality. Numbers in the garden.

The urban gardener can expect a return on investment of around 400-500%. This is a very similar figure to what he measured in the crisis gardens during the world war. (A válságok kertjei) Every dollar invested yielded $5 in crops. Surprisingly good business.

The last weekend in August is International World Kitchen Garden Day. Most urban gardens hold their own International Kitchen Garden Day. We hold an open garden day, with posters inviting people in the garden. The gardeners show the garden and their beds to the public. The community comes up with the programmes and organises the day’s events. It is a popular press event, or families and residents of the area come to the garden.

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September

This is the time when everything is ready, when there are lots of crops, when gardeners’ families tend to rebel against the constant eating of courgettes. The compost bins start to fill up and next spring we will have good quality compost of our own.

Composting is a constant topic of debate. There are those who conscientiously chop everything up, and others who don’t bother. Sometimes it’s just easier to cut up the larger pieces left in the composting bin than to argue or blame. The problem will be solved in a few years.

October

The season is slowly coming to an end, and we are starting to prepare to get the garden ready for the winter period. Cleaning out the beds, adding nutrients, etc. We need to organise an end-of-season build-up day in advance, usually at the end of October. A lot of green garden waste is generated at this time, so it may be worth re-learning how to compost.

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November

We are back to one meeting a month. We evaluate the year and start planning for the next season. In recent years I have sent out an online questionnaire to all garden members, a kind of satisfaction survey, with very interesting results. It helps a lot in planning the next season and the municipality is also interested in the questionnaire.

It is important, especially in the common areas, to discuss what worked, what didn’t, how to improve the garden for the next year. Many valuable comments are made about the garden, innovations, new tools, suggestions for organisation.

The last two months of the year, when the garden manager of the first season, the garden founder, leaves the garden, must be prepared for this, a new garden manager must be elected. At the garden meeting, we go through the tasks of the garden leader and the community elects garden leaders from the applicants. It is recommended to form a garden coordination team of 2-3 people, it is a bit much work for one person. It is worth clarifying who will stay in the garden, are there any leavers? New garden members will be selected from the waiting list to replace those who leave. There is turnover in every garden, with a 3-5% drop-out rate. This usually means 1-2 beds. They leave the garden for various reasons, mainly moving new house, maybe a new job that doesn’t give them time to garden.

December

To close the year, we celebrate the first season of the garden, have a party, the future garden coordination team takes over the management of the garden.

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Article series 04

It is a commonplace to say that in a community garden, ten percent is gardening and ninety percent is community life. Many people come to the garden for the companionship, the community programs, or perhaps for the environmental consciousness; the plants are really just a valuable plus.

The word of Community is a fashionable word today, it is a bit overused, it has lost much of its original meaning. In this section, I would like to describe garden communities, their development and their functioning.

Community development is an essential element in the establishment of community gardens. Potential gardeners don’t know each other when the garden is started, random volunteers, who should develop a tight-knit community by the end of the first year, who will be able to maintain and develop the garden in the following seasons. The task of the first year is to get the members to work together through conscious organisation, tasks and meetings, to develop a culture of cooperation, to finish the first season successfully and to prepare them to continue working independently. 

It is a common mistake to neglect community development when establishing a community garden, when there is no community development or no conscious element. I see many gardens that have been built by the municipality, handed over to the gardeners, but there has been no community development, it has become a chaotic, dysfunctional garden, more of an embarrassment to the municipality than a success. Communities don’t develop on their own, they need development, external intervention to help the gardening team through the first season, both to get through the season successfully and to become a community in the process. Community building is a prerequisite for the success of community gardens, an essential element.

If there is no systematic development, on the one hand, there is no culture of cooperation, and in the worst case, the community that has not yet been formed may break up into factions and small groups that hardly cooperate with each other. But there are also many examples of individuals provoking discord in the garden with their lack of community, their willfulness, as happens on a larger scale in society. Certainly there are individuals who, if not consciously, act as community destroyers, to the detriment of the community that is being formed. Such situations need to be dealt with by the garden manager, either to bring the person to their senses or to ban them from the garden.

The focus and foundation of community building is the garden itself, through which community cooperation and neighbourhood community is created. Garden communities are organised around a fixed location, where they always meet and where events take place. It is not only the garden beds and their own crops, but the development, care and events of the garden itself that build the community, giving tradition and continuity over the seasons. It is relatively easy to build community in a garden.

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It is important that every gardener and family has an individual garden bed, and it is also important that everyone has exactly the same kind of bed. Communal gardening is not viable, you can’t see how much work someone puts into their plants, how careful they are. The individual garden beds inevitably give rise to gardening competition (my tomatoes are redder, my courgettes are bigger, I have more beans, etc.) This is a very important element, because it gives a sense of achievement, it is a constant topic of conversation, and halfway through the season gardeners are already planning the plants and planting order for the next season. The garden competition is triggering of the increasing biodiversity of the garden. In addition, there are areas of common cultivation, the herb garden, flower sections, these are areas of common gardening. The long-term goal of garden communities is to achieve sustainability.

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There’s always something going on in the beds, the garden always gives you something to do, the plants give you enough pleasure and excitement, it’s easy to build a community in a garden where nature provides the rhythm, the activity and the sense of achievement, the garden manager’s job is to organise the smooth and predictable running of the garden.

Regular community events and garden meetings are essential, especially in the first season. Events can include garden meetings, building garden furniture, garden parties, garden clean-up days, hosting guests in the garden, etc. All should be well-organised events. A community garden gives you tasks, not just to keep your own bed tidy, but the whole garden. A garden is a set of tasks that require organisation, cooperation, coordination, foresight and communication. It is the combination of these and their successful operation that makes a group of gardeners a community. This is what the first season is for, to practice how to run the garden together. It is the task of the garden founder to organise these events and to see the first season through successfully. Everyone finds a task and a sense of achievement in the garden.

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Very important garden tools for community building are communal spaces, fire pits, tables and chairs, which are mostly built by garden members from pallets. This is the centre of the garden, where we can hold garden meetings during the summer, where garden cooking is done, where the conversations take place. You need to be able to sit down in the garden, you need to build lots of benches. There should be a sandpit for the children, that’s usually the community place for them.

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The fire, cooking together, has a very strong community-building power. Garden parties are a nice way to feel good, when we cook together, fry bacon, have a fire, have company, there are lots of us in the garden, and we can talk about all sorts of things.

Gardens are run according to rules: on the one hand, there is a garden contract, which defines the legal relationship between the garden and the gardener. In addition, there is a set of garden regulations, which help to define garden behaviour and cooperation. It should be mentioned that in every garden there are unwritten norms, and that the formation of community norms, customary laws and traditions is part of becoming a community. In well-established gardens that have been around for several seasons, these are an automatic part of the process. In the case of start-up gardens, the founder or garden leader leads the team in establishing them. Garden rules and norm building make the garden’s organisational functioning predictable and acceptable, and in the long term, a stable and predictable organisation.

Community development is in many ways similar to business development, but the goal is not to make a profit, but to maintain the garden and see the seasons through. Garden meetings are also similar to company meetings in many ways, there are agenda items, tasks to be done, things to be discussed, planning, resources to be allocated and monitoring to follow through. Of course, it is much more relaxed, much more informal than a corporate event, but the goal is very similar, the success of the organisation.

The one-third rule.

Becoming a community does not mean that everything becomes uniform, everyone becomes the same, everyone takes an equal part in the life of the garden. Even in established, long-operating gardens, there is a third of the membership who are very active, attending every event, another third who come most of the time, participate in the life of the garden, and a third who are much less so. It’s not a family or a company, it’s a community of volunteers. We must make sure that there are no neglected beds, that there are not a majority of people who only take care of their own beds and hardly any of the garden. From time to time, lazy garden members can be asked to leave the garden and replaced by more active, eager new members. Each garden has a long waiting list.

Education for gardeners

We are not born gardeners, and a good gardener is always learning, we are not dealing with a static thing, but with nature. Experience has shown that garden education is important for start-up gardens, both to give everyone a comprehensive basic training in growing plants and to give them professional help during the season, for example on planting day or in season for pest control. All gardens are organic with an emphasis on natural control, professional help is essential. There is a serlist of products that can be used for plant protection in the garden, but they are all ecologically neutral, we strive for natural control and prohibit the use of chemical products under any circumstances. In the same way, we do not use fertiliser in the garden, we enrich the soil of the beds with natural manure and compost produced in the garden.

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In the start-up gardens, we will hold 4 classroom sessions before the season.

In the start-up gardens, we will hold 4 classroom sessions before the season.

The topics are approximately as follows

1. Basic gardening concepts, soil and nutrients, plant classification, environmental needs (soil, nutrients, water, sunlight, temperature), plant protection, garden tools

2. Reproduction, plant protection, sowing, planting, transplanting, seedling, grafting, germination, cuttings

3. Vegetables, grouping of vegetables, their biology, ecological needs, cultivation technology, detailed description of the most important vegetables. 

4. Cultivation of medicinal plants, herbs, flowers, berries, their uses, balance between edible and ornamental plants. Flowers are multiplied in multi-seasonal gardens and gardeners start to ‘decorate’ the garden from the second season onwards. This element becomes more important as the years go by, bringing great pleasure to gardeners and residents alike.

5. Planting day. Planting day is usually held around April-May, when the temperature is warm enough to keep the plants from freezing.  It is very important that the garden teacher is present in the garden on planting day. A basic mistake of beginner gardeners is to overplant their beds, trying to grow everything. Getting the seedlings planted well, at the right distance and professionally is a very important starting event. Planting day is always a very fun, enthusiastic event, when it becomes clear that there will be gardening here, there will be a harvest here, the first season in the garden is starting. Everybody is rushing around their beds, wondering what to plant and where to plant it. It is then that it becomes clear how important it is to draw up a planting plan in advance. By the time the seedlings and seeds are in the beds, there is a little disappointment, the seedlings are too small, few people can see the July and August planting boom. 

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The planting day is also the day for planting grasses and flower seeds, and for grassing if the walking surface is grassy.

Once or twice during the season, a gardening teacher comes to the garden, a pre-arranged community event where we talk through plant diseases and pests, like a hospital visit, bed by bed, giving professional advice to the gardener. Of course everyone is clustered around her, listening to her every word.

At the end of the first season, the founder of the garden will leave the garden community and let them go. At the last garden meeting of the year, the community elects new leaders, usually 2-3 people to take over the leadership of the garden. We call it the garden coordination group. The point of community building is that by the end of the process the community is able to run the seasons themselves, they no longer need outside intervention, they have become self-reliant and have elected their own garden leadership.

Sikeresen túl vagyunk a Toldy kert ünnepélyes megnyitóján. Ez Kispesten az ötödik közösségi-városi kert, amúgy a kilencedik kertalapításom. Sok nehézség után, egy nagyon jó kert született és bár kicsit elcsúszott a kertépítés, mégis lett egy elég jó szezon, a következő évek meg még jobbak lesznek.Az elkövetkező években a kert továbbfejlesztése lesz a feladat, kialakítani a fűszerkertet, virágágyásokat, továbbfejleszteni a közösségi teret. Lesz munka vele elég.

Ez a Toldy kert adatlapja.

Article series 03

One of the most interesting parts of the garden creation process is the landscape design process.

A community garden is a complex design task, it has many functions, many garden elements to design, attention to operation and safety, and it must also be aesthetically pleasing. Be sure to design with a professional, a landscape architect who has seen a community garden, or better still, has been part of one. It is also an interesting challenge for landscape architects to build a community garden, and it is no coincidence that many graduate students choose to design a community garden as part of their landscape architecture degree. There are so many great, creative, innovative garden designs and garden ideas to be seen, but keep your creativity in check and focus on usability and developability when designing. A community garden is designed for decades, and in the second or third season the community garden goes beyond the design concept and starts its own development. This is what the plants and the garden members want. A community garden is part organism, part organization, only the participants can change, but the garden is permanent, there is a season every year, in many ways independent of the gardeners.

It is really the job of the landscape architect to lay the foundations of the garden in a good, functional way, and then the garden can stand on its own. In a few years it will grow far beyond the concept of the designer.

The field survey, determining the location of the garden

The municipality’s property management department usually provides a list of possible sites in the district where a community garden could be established. Visit the sites on the list and consider the following points.

The size of the site.
The community garden should be about 1,000 square metres, which should accommodate about 25-28 beds and the common cultivation areas, walkways, community space, etc. The 25-28 beds are important because this is about the number of people that can be used to build a community. Too large an area is not worth it because the garden needs to be maintained, if it is too large it makes it difficult to operate. And too small an area can accommodate too few beds, and the garden will cost too much in terms of species.

Sun exposure.
It’s not worth starting a garden on a narrow plot of land squeezed between buildings or in an area overgrown with trees, because your plants won’t grow. 10 to 12 hours of sunlight a day is a must. It is good if there are trees in the future community garden, because then the community space can be planted around them, with shady, quiet areas, but the majority of the area should be undisturbed by sunlight.

Water network.
The garden should be irrigated, usually with tap water or a borehole. Water charges are paid by the gardeners, but in many cases they are paid by the municipality. Each district irrigates a very large area, in this community gardens are not really a major item. You also have to build a water network with multiple outlets within the garden, this also requires planning. A garden water network is basic equipment, without it there is no functioning garden. Rainwater harvesting is always an issue, but experience shows that this is almost never enough, and in addition water tanks are very expensive.

Soil, growing environment
Urban land is unsuitable for growing crops. It is polluted, used up, not worth experimenting with. In Budapest, only brought-in soil is used in raised beds in community gardens. In the case of imported soil, it is also worth checking in advance what is being delivered, as we have often had stony, weed-contaminated soil, which has caused a lot of problems, until we managed to turn it into a good quality growing environment. Over a season in raised beds, the soil is quite overused, so nutrient replenishment is very important. In addition, raised beds have many advantages: you have to bend less to cultivate, you can control the quality and nutrient content of the soil, you need less water, and pests have less access to your plants. Each autumn, when the garden is put into winter rest, garden compost is added to the raised beds and it is worth adding some mature cattle manure, so that you have a nutrient-rich, good quality growing environment again for the next season.

Population density.
Community gardens should be created mainly in residential areas, in densely built-up urban areas, where there is a high density of inhabitants and a lack of small gardens. Many pensioners live in housing estates and there are many families with young children, who tend to be the most active members of community gardens. In garden cities it is not worth starting a community garden, as everyone has their own garden. It is a basic experience that a community garden should only be started as a neighbourhood community. The further away garden members come from, the faster they leave the garden. People who live nearby are the most active garden members, those who have to travel to the garden quickly get bored and drop out.

Community garden landscape architectural design, design process

An urban garden has to perform many functions, so careful and professional planning is essential. The garden is not just a space for urban agriculture and crop production: it also has a community and educational function, it must fit into the urban environment, it must be part of the life of the neighbourhood and, last but not least, it must be aesthetically pleasing. There is, of course, community planning; by no means should prospective users be left out of the planning process, but an educated professional approach to planning is essential to the long-term success of the garden. So the foundations on which the community will build a working garden must be well laid. A community garden is not completed in the first season. It is then that the basic functions are built – beds, fencing, watersystem, walkways – and then in the following seasons the gardeners themselves develop it further, making it richer, more comfortable and, above all, more lush and colourful.

Elements of the design
Fencing, raised beds, water system irrigation, composters, communal areas (herb garden, flower beds, fruit trees), walkways, community space location and features, sandpit for children, garden furniture, sun shade, fire pit, lockable tool storage and outside garden areas.

Concept plans.
The best method so far has been the joint course weeks with the Department of Landscape Architecture at Corvinus University, where students of landscape architecture have created concept plans for a specific site. In the process, they met with future gardeners and representatives of the municipality, and experienced the design of a community garden as a real-life task. This is how the Békási garden, the Szélrózsa community garden in Szentendre, and one of the most beautiful garden designs, which was not realized afterwards, the Amfikert design. The students’ concept designs are then used to put together a final design and a construction plan. Experience has shown that it is better not to leave the creation of the final plan to the students, as they have neither the time nor the professional skills to do it. Design work cannot be avoided and is worth paying for.

History of the Amphitheatre Garden- Amfi Garden
Two thousand years ago, Budapest was part of the Roman Empire, a border city along the Limes, on the banks of the Danube. It was called Aquincum and interestingly enough had two amphitheatres, one for the military town and a smaller one for the civil town. The ruins of these two amphitheatres still stand today, in the third district of Budapest. In the concept design, the students used the architectural form of the amphitheatre as a model for the community garden, and a very beautiful and original design was created. The only problem was that we never managed to realise it, and I still miss it.

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Concept plans for the Békási Garden

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Concept plans for the Böszi Garden

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Construction
It is best if the municipality has its own contractor and has them build the garden. They can plan the garden construction into the annual work schedule, they have the experts, we don’t have to deal with the accounting, it’s the best solution from all points of view. The construction of the community garden takes 2-3 months, usually starts after the frosts have passed and, if we are lucky, it is ready for the gardeners to take over at the beginning of the growing season. The contractors are expected to build the foundation garden, while the landscaping and starting of the garden is done by the gardeners.

Construction of the Böszi garden

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Garden building day
When the contractors leave the site, we organise a construction day on a specific day in advance. This is when we put the finishing touches to the garden, discuss the amount of garden furniture, the location of the communal space, set up the composting bins and install the water system.

Planting day
Right after the construction day, the next community event is the planting day, when the first seeds and seedlings are planted. As part of the garden establishment, garden members are given gardening training and are asked to make a bedding plan of what and where they will plant in their beds. By this time, everyone’s home windows are full of seedlings, and established communities organise to buy seedlings from growers together. There are many companies on the internet with a very wide range of seedlings. This method is good because, above a certain quantity, the contractor brings the selected seedlings to your home, you don’t have to bother with transport and you can buy really good quality, often special plants.

Planting Day is a big event every season, with gardeners preparing their own bed planting plans well in advance, and much of the classroom training is about this beforehand. We also have the seedlings, and we start planting in the common areas, especially the herb garden, but along the fences we plant flowers and runners just to make the garden look better. Perennials should not be planted in the first season, it’s better to get the garden settled and familiar with it first, and then berries and fruit trees can be planted in the second season. Be careful when planting trees, because after a few years they can grow very large and overshadow beds. Any major planting should be discussed by the community, and there should be a consensus. The herb garden and the flower areas usually have a person in charge who is skilled and willing to take charge, and the community cultivates these areas under his or her guidance.

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Furniture building days
The garden is a community space that needs to be organised and it is a special community-building activity for gardeners to make their own garden furniture, usually from pallets. The internet is full of better and better garden pallet ideas, so it’s worth looking for interesting designs and good solutions and putting them into practice. In a community garden, what you definitely need: a big table around which the company can sit, benches, lots of seating. There should be plenty of seating in the garden, it is not pleasant to stand around all the time. A table and benches are not made in a day, it takes weeks if you add that they have to be painted. Once the basic furniture is in place, you’ll have a much more comfortable overall garden, attracting gardeners to spend more and more time there.

Compost bins can also be built from pallets, but often the municipality provides compost frames, which are distributed to the public, so that compost bins are also available for the community garden. Place them away from the community square, preferably in a shady part of the garden. Over time, the composting frames will multiply, there is a very large amount of green waste in the community garden that can and should be composted. Many gardeners bring their green waste from home, so to avoid mistakes, be sure to have composting education before you start recycling. Be aware that compost bins attract mice and, less often, rats. Especially in the winter, when they burrow in the middle of the compost bin where it is warm, you have to be prepared for this and protect the garden against them. It looks bad that if you find mice or rats in the garden, this should be avoided.

Place the sandpit next to the community space, preferably in the shade. Young children are not so fascinated by the world of plants, but they love the sandpit, and parents are happy because the child is occupied with the other little ones, they can play in the sand, there is peace and quiet. It’s funny how plastic sandpit toys tend to multiply at a devouring rate in gardens, I once found a plastic dinosaur lurking in the grass in one garden. Good community gardens tend to have a lot of abandoned toys, after a while they become part of the garden, they get put away in the tool shed in the winter, they turn up again in the spring to the children’s delight.

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Build a firepit.
Beyond the plants and nature, one of the most important community-building elements in the garden is the fire. I didn’t realise this until I set up a garden framework where fire pits could not be installed for fire safety reasons. Fire is the oldest invention of humankind, the last 400,000 to 600,000 years have been spent with our ancestors sitting around the fire in the evenings, cooking and talking, it is almost genetically coded. Even in community gardens, cooking together, the garden party, is one of the best community-building activities. A lot of people come, conversations develop spontaneously, it’s actually on these occasions that we get to know each other, it’s free time well spent, everyone loves it. There is also a garden where they have improved the cooking in the garden, they have built a pizza oven, it’s particularly interesting how everyone makes their own pizza. Although alcohol is not usually consumed in the community gardens, there is a spritz, and possibly beer, during the garden parties, more for the atmosphere.

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Tool storage.
After a while, garden tools, cans and all sorts of gardening tools start to accumulate in the garden, and it’s a good idea to store them. The tool storage is done during the year, you can make it fun, like in the Zápor garden, where we painted the not so nice tool storage, so it was much more acceptable.

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What are the most important tools in the community garden?
In community gardens there are individual tools, small gardening shovels, pruning shears, and shared tools. Not every bed needs its own shovel, digging fork, rake, etc. We need 2-3 of these, and we take turns using them. We need hoses, watering cans, and many gardens have mowers. Then over the years you get more and more tools. It’s worth fixing in the garden rule so that if someone uses tools, they always put them back in the bin cleaned.

In the next part, I will write about community building, the year-long process by which gardeners become a community and take control of the garden.

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Article series 02

In the previous article, we talked about the history of community gardens, now we will learn about the process of establishing urban gardens.

Privately owned urban land is rarely considered, as the owner has an interest in building a store, a housing estate or a car park on the allotment, which generates money, whereas a community garden has no profit-making function. This is why municipalities and municipal land are the most likely targets, especially in residential areas. The high population density in housing estates makes recruitment easy and at the same time there are thousands of square metres of little used land in housing areas that are suitable for gardens. It is no coincidence that most of the community gardens in Budapest were created in blocks of flats.

An average community garden is about 1,000 square metres, it is important that it is close to residential areas, with enough sunlight it should be sunny, you should be able to manage irrigation water, and it should be surrounded by a fence. Without a fence there is no community garden, without a water network you cannot grow plants. The municipality tends to designate areas as gardens that are either functionless or have lost their former function. We have had gardens built on the site of a long-defunct playground, another garden on the site of an old, long-defunct park, and gardens that were illegal dog runs. What should be avoided, for example, is to take land from an existing well functioning park to use as a community garden, this is very wrong, it should be avoided.

Today it is not difficult to convince municipalities of the benefits of establishing a community garden, this is now commonplace and obvious, it was a bit different before. Today, the problem is more a lack of quality and a lack of thought in the projects. Some municipalities think that it is enough to build the garden and it will work well. The reality is that it is not that simple, unfortunately we have seen many really embarrassingly failed garden launches in recent years. The peculiarity of a botched garden is that there are no professionals involved in the establishment, there is no concept of developing the garden community, there is no garden management or it is done by an incompetent person, there is no gardening education, there are no community events, everyone is just making their own bed, and the garden as a whole is in the process of being ruined.

The first step was to get the attention of the municipality. The task was to demonstrate the community gardens, how they work and, most importantly, why they are worthwhile for the municipality, through a spectacular presentation, using international examples. At the beginning, everyone liked the initiative, but the realisation was difficult, mainly because of the untried and new nature of the idea. If the Mayor says yes to the development, the hard part starts from there. Municipalities are quite complex organisations, with many laws and regulations affecting their operation, and there is also the representative body who ultimately have to vote on the garden establishment. In the very first municipal community garden, the Első Kis-Pesti Kert almost every municipal committee and department had a word in the project, and all had to be approved and supported before the garden could be started. This took nearly a year, with legal negotiations, financial planning, property management, voting by the Board of Representatives, etc. Ultimately, the aim is to ensure that the Community Garden is included in the municipal budget for the next financial year, that capital is allocated to it and that the conditions for its design, construction and operation are clarified, and that it is legally and contractually implemented. The council and the departments will only give the project the go-ahead if they are certain that the future garden is destined to succeed and cannot fail. The council’s primary concern is that the garden shoul be a success, that they have as few problems with it as possible, that it does not cause them any trouble or extra work. Of course, this is understandable, municipal work is a profession full of stress and problems, they don’t need another confrontation, they have enough.

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The fundamental secret to the survival of urban community gardens is a kind of common benefit, a “win-win” situation for gardeners, neighbourhood residents, the municipality and city (district) leaders, in which everyone finds the benefits of the gardens accruing to them. What are these benefits?

The benefits of community gardeners

First and foremost, benefits are not necessarily a monetary value, and in fact in gardens we are talking more about benefits that cannot be bought with money. The benefits of gardeners are somewhere in the range of: busyness, responsibility and a sense of achievement, a sense of enrichment, pride, a caring experience, a life perspective, satisfaction, physical well-being, health-mental benefits, quantity of crops, learning new skills, community experience, educational processes, children in the garden, cooperation with others, closeness to nature, conversations, fame, press coverage. And of course, your own produce. There are so many benefits. Everyone can choose the one that is most important to them.

In a community garden, ten percent of the time is gardening, ninety percent is community life: tending beds and common areas, garden meetings, conversations, occasional garden parties, playing with children and relaxing. Getting away from the routine of home or work, blending into a wider group, is something everyone needs. There are so many different things to talk about in a garden, so many new stories to hear, while the garden and its plants give us a sense of occupation and pleasure. In the summer, when the heat is barely bearable, the garden is the place to relax, cool off, have fun and talk a lot. Today, when loneliness is almost a universal disease, the community garden is the best catalyst for making friends, talking to others, feeling important, becoming part of an active community.

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Of course, the quantity of crops is very important. Growing your own produce is always better and healthier than buying it, and it has a special bond with the gardener. Moreover, you can harvest an amazing amount of produce from a bed of 5-7 square metres, and at a time when we are seeing unprecedented increases in the price of fruit and vegetables, this is what counts. And interestingly, the benefits only increase from here, as raw vegetables are turned into food, another level of creativity and another sense of achievement is garnered. In the gardens, recipes are a serious topic of conversation, who makes what from their produce, and gardeners regularly bring in tasters. When we have garden parties, you can taste them and be proud of our culinary art.

In some gardens, especially in the first season, we did garden statistics. The idea is that everyone measures their own crops and we put them together in a chart. 2023 in the Böszi Barden ( Budapest XII district, Böszörményi út) the following data came out at the end of the season.

366 kg of tomatoes, 25 kg of peppers, 26 kg of eggplants, 148 kg of cucumbers, 145 kg of courgettes, 45 kg of pumpkins, 14 kg of melons, 13 kg of carrots, 22 kg of batata, 10 kg of kohlrabi, 30 kg of green beans and so on. In total, 51 crops are included in the statistics, and there was almost a tonne of produce. It was a good season for the garden.

Numbers in the Community Gardens

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These volumes are of course also expressed in money terms and the quality was very high. Own produce. It is very important to note that the produce of the community garden is not for sale, it is for personal use and self-sufficiency. This is laid down in the garden rules and in the garden contract and applies to all gardens.

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Benefits for the district, the neighbourhood and the municipality

Urban green spaces are overused, very difficult to maintain and extremely expensive. The natural need of city residents is for their living environment to be as green as possible and to be as flowery as possible. At the same time, city residents themselves are rather careless with the environment, littering, polluting and destroying their green surroundings, whether for a reason or not. In addition, gardening is extremely expensive, a serious expense for local authorities year after year.

For a municipality, to designate a thousand square metres of land, build a good quality urban garden on it, spend money on community development, to start the garden, is a minimal investment compared to the annual budget of the municipality, but what you get in return is far more than the investment cost. For example: the district will be enriched with a very active neighbourhood community, a very high quality, biodiverse garden, a positive press coverage, both in the local press and in the national press. The garden is shaping the image of the district, is a new and popular initiative, and is featured in all district publications, films and environmental events. The garden is self-sustaining, it needs to be built once and then it runs itself, it gets more beautiful every year, the maintenance costs to the municipality are minimal.(It’s worthwhile for the municipality to count some amortization costs for the gardens and to help the garden develop, but it’s not a big item.) The garden communities don’t just exist within the fence, they appear at district events, host kindergarten and school classes in the garden, for example in the framework of the “Biology Lessons in the Community Garden” programme, to which the residents of the area and other NGOs are invited. The community gardens hold open days, members take part in district green actions, many researchers and graduate students study the gardens, this is also a reputation, this is also a benefit.

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The urban garden is a small model of how we can live better, create a better quality of life, cultivate ourselves and our communities, our beds, our environment and the neighbourhoods where we live, within the city. Moreover, the district leadership can be a partner in this, working together towards a good goal.

Article series 01

Introduction, preface, purpose of the article series

I was asked by the Hungarian Kertbarát Magazin to write a series of articles on the topic of community gardens, which I would like to share in English on this website. In the coming months I will translate six articles into English, covering the following topics, as he history of community gardens, community garden establishment – start-up, planning, design and implementation, community development and education, and managing the first season.

As the Urban Gardens Association, I have established nine community gardens in Budapest since 2012. All the gardens are located on municipal land, are a municipal investment, and we have recruited community gardeners from the neighbourhood, basically creating neighbourhood communities. As a garden manager, my role was to develop the community garden, coordinate the garden and successfully complete the first season. This includes everything from planning, to training, to a successful first season and everything that goes with community gardening. With each garden start, the goal is for the community to be self-sustaining within a year, to be self-organising, to continue the garden and community the following season, and for me to leave and start a new garden. In many ways there is a kind of organisational development process where the organisation is the garden community itself and the aim is to sustain and run the garden on an ongoing basis.

In the early 2000s, in New York, I saw 40-50 year old community gardens that were beautifully run, although they didn’t even know who the first gardeners were, who the founder was? In a way, that’s what urban gardens are supposed to do, beautify neighborhoods and develop neighborhood communities, bring permanence and beauty to their surroundings, semi-independently of the actual gardeners. The garden as a permanent site, nature as an ever-changing challenge, provides so much task and pleasure that it is possible to perpetuate the operation of an urban garden, season after season, theoretically forever.

In my own life, community gardens emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, as a college professor I lectured to students about the Great Depression of 1929-32 and that was my first exposure to crisis and war gardens. Let’s start from there…

Crisis gardens, war gardens, Cuba, modern American community gardens

During the Great Depression of 1929 in the United States, two types of crisis gardens were used, one to support self-sufficient individual gardens with tools and seeds, and the other to produce basic crops (potatoes, carrots, onions, tomatoes, etc.) for free public and school catering.

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If we take a narrow view of the concept of the community garden today and do not look towards initiatives such as the garden city movement (which deserves a separate article), the birth of modern urban community gardens has always been linked to a period of crisis, whether it be war or economic crisis. Initially, their aim was to create partial food self-sufficiency and to employ the unemployed. In the First World War these self-sufficient gardens and the self-sufficiency movement were called Liberty Gardens and in the Second World War Victory Gardens. All sides in the war were concerned about the food supply of the population, so government-sponsored programs were the urban-rural self-sufficiency garden movements. They did so with great success, so much so that by 1918, in World War I, figures show that more than 5.2 million war garden plots had been established in the US, producing $525 million in crops.

The situation was similar during the Second World War, when the movement was called Victory Gardens. Britain was in a special predicament, as the naval blockade put them in a particularly difficult position, and for them, in addition to the strict rationing system, getting rid of starvation meant becoming self-sufficient. England’s food supply from the industrial revolution depended on food produced in the colonies, they were not self-sufficient in food.

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Modern community gardens – the beginnings

Urban community gardens in the modern sense of the word can actually be traced back to the late 1960s, when Liz Chisty and her team of Green Guerillas founded a community garden on a deserted street corner in New York City (Bowery Houston Farm and Garden 1972), followed by several other gardens. The urban garden movements emerged after the student unrest of 1968 died down, and these green movements carried the momentum of the student revolts forward. Interestingly, the change of regime in Hungary 1989 also started as an ecological – environmental movement against the regulation of the Danube river and the construction of power plants, under the name of the Danube Circle.

New York in the sixties and seventies experienced a severe economic crisis, public safety had reached catastrophic levels, the city was full of empty lots, bankrupt factories, rust belts, land that attracted crime, full of with garbage , problems for everyone. One of the objectives of the Green Guerrilla movement was to prevent crime by illegally occupying vacant urban land, greening it and maintaining a permanent presence and establishing neighbourhood communities that looked after each other. Interestingly, it was only in 2013 that New York City adopted the legal status of community gardens and included them in the city’s green register system. All this happened under the mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg. Since then, the Green Thumb, the hallmark of a good gardener, has been established to provide central support for urban community gardens within the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. They currently have 550 community gardens.

In 1978, a non-profit garden association was formed in the USA, the American Community Gardening Association, which organises community gardens in the United States and Canada, with 14,000 registered gardens. This movement is clearly no longer just about food production – although there is certainly a factor at work in the rapidly rising inflation, oil crisis, urban poverty, and the uplift of marginalised groups – but also about improving the vitality of cities, bringing people and ethnic groups together, and trying to respond locally to environmental degradation and, in many cases, creating alternative cultural venues.

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The urban climate change of the last decade, and especially the environmental rethinking of cities and urbanised areas, has given a new boost to the community garden movement worldwide. Community-maintained gardens and parks are becoming part of the urban ecosystem, they are gaining attention and are even a positive call to action for policy makers and city and district leaders, a positive initiative worthy of active support.

Detroit, the city of crisis gardens

It is interesting to note that in the last decades, cities and communities in crisis in the United States have rediscovered the crisis garden movement, such as Detroit, once one of the richest cities in the US, the capital of the automotive and military industries, but now a run-down, unpromising metropolis, one of the most unlivable cities in the US. In recent years, a self-sufficient garden movement has taken off, much like the gardens of the Great Depression, growing food on a large scale and trying to hold together crumbling communities.

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Cuba the crisis garden country

The other modern example of a crisis garden comes from Cuba in the early 1990s. During the Cold War period, Cuba produced and shipped sugar and tobacco to the socialist countries in a monoculture-like way, in exchange for finished goods, fertiliser and oil. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Cuba suffered a massive economic crisis, and its previously well-funded economy collapsed. Food shortages developed in the country, so free land was distributed among the inhabitants – any city resident could get land suitable for gardening in the cities or on the outskirts of the city. More than half of Havana’s fruit and vegetable consumption came from community gardens, and there was also small-scale livestock farming. Community gardens in Cuba not only provide food for their members, but also have enough produce to support schools, hospitals and the elderly, and even have surpluses to sell in local markets. By the 2000s, 500 community markets were operating across Cuba, 30-50% cheaper than state shops. No one in the country is starving, despite decades of US embargoes. One of the most interesting things about their example is that they have achieved these results through organic farming: they use no fuel, no fertilisers and no special pesticides to produce their food. This process is beautifully illustrated in the documentary film “The Power of Community”.

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Első Kis-Pesti Kert 2012, Budapest

In 2012, I founded my first garden in the 19th district of Budapest, in cooperation with the local government, the Első Kis-Pesti Kert. The garden is 12 years old this year, it works perfectly, and in the last decade it has flourished, it is a kind of miracle how many different plants can grow on a thousand square metres, if they are well cared for. The Első Kis Pesti kert is so successful that for years it has won the national competition for the Best Kitchen Garden, Community Garden category, and last year it was awarded the permanent title.

This year I’m starting my ninth garden, all of them working well. There are no perfect gardens, they are made up of plants and people, they are affected by nature, the weather, the interactions of garden members, garden pests, you could go on and on about how many variables there are in a community garden. Community gardens exist along life cycle models, in part the plant population has its own life cycle, and the garden community evolves along a life cycle, similar to the way a company is organized. Organizational development and community building have many similarities. Establishing a community garden is partly a process of organization, law, landscape design, education, and community development.

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In the following sections, I will introduce the process of starting a community, urban garden, the first steps of starting a garden, and the benefits of community gardens.

Új év, új kert. Idén Kispesten építek új kertet, immár az ötödiket. Ez a kertalapítás nagyon elhúzódott, gondolom a választások miatt, minden összekavarodott. Minden esetre a kerttervezés folyik, megvolt az első kertgyűlés, jövő héttől a kertész oktatások is beindulnak. Nagyjából egy hónap alatt csináljuk végig az oktatásokat és kertgyűléseket. Normális esetben ez 3-4 hónap szokott lenni. Sűrű lesz, de lesz kert, lesz szezon.

A Böszi kert gyönyörű. A kertészek nagyon felkészültek, az ágyások nagyon jól néznek ki. Most még a korai ültetésekkel vannak elfoglalva, a megrendelt palánták májusban fognak érkezni.

Több nagyon szép része lett a kertnek. Az egyik a rézsűt megtámasztó beton ültetőelemekben a növények fantasztikusan fejlődnek. Az öntözőrendszer nagyon hasznosnak bizonyult tavaly, mostanra nagyon szép lett az összkép. Még az év elején kigazoltuk, most egyszerűen gyönyörű.

A Böszörményi út felőli terület, tavaly nagyon gazos volt, sok problémánk volt vele és nem is nézett ki jól. Csilla szervezte és csinálta, hogy bevetette az egészet vadvirág magkeverékkel, egészen gyönyörű lett. Azt a cél, hogy a gyomokat a vadvirágok elnyomják, ez eddig sikerült. Kifejezetten szép virágos rét lett a “plató”, remélem egész évben ilyen marad. A Böszörmény útról a nézelődők ezt látják most.

Mindenki ültet, az ágyások rendezettek, jó szezonja lesz a Böszi kertnek.

A Zápor kertbe iskolások jöttek, környezetismereti óra keretében mindenféle megfigyeléseket végeztek. Jól szervezett esemény volt, minden gyereknek volt egy kitöltendő kérdőíve, felkészült tanárok hozták őket. Olgával és Lajossal próbáltunk válaszolni az ezer kérdésükre, jó élmény volt. Okosak, érdeklődők voltak, nagy ákombákom betűkkel írták az okosságokat a tesztbe, vicces volt.

Interjút adtam a kertekről a Magyar Nemzetnek, ennek apropóján, kimentem a Békási kertbe, épp kerti partit rendeztek. 12 éves az a kert, nagyon összenőtt. Jó a csapat, az elmúlt időszakban felvettel új, fiatal tagokat, szimpatikus emberek, szeretik a kertélményt. Szépen összeszokott jó közösség és kert is persze.

Remélem jó szezonjuk lesznek a kerteknek.

Food from urban agriculture has carbon footprint six times larger than conventional produce, study shows.

I received an article in English about the carbon footprint of urban agriculture and community gardens. The basic thesis of the study is that vegetables grown in urban gardens have six times the average CO2 load of outdoor, large-scale production.

The argument is that the materials used in the construction of gardens (raised beds, walkways, fencing, water systems), the CO2 generated in their production, all add to the CO2 load of the crops, and thus represent a greater environmental burden compared to large-scale industrial agriculture. It has been calculated that the carbon load is six times greater. Of course, the article goes on to look at phenomena such as asparagus transported by plane and the environmental impact of vegetables grown in greenhouses, and finds that urban gardens are better off with a smaller ecological footprint.

One of the main findings of the study:

„On average, food produced through urban agriculture emitted 0.42 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents per serving, six times higher than the 0.07 kg CO₂e per serving of conventionally grown produce.”

The other very clever sentence is:

“Most of the climate impacts at urban farms are driven by the materials used to construct them—the infrastructure,” Goldstein said. “These farms typically only operate for a few years or a decade, so the greenhouse gases used to produce those materials are not used effectively. Conventional agriculture, on the other hand, is very efficient and hard to compete with.”

Now, let’s add some practical observations:

Urban gardens and community gardens must be built. There is no such thing as open field cultivation in the city, apart from private gardens. Raised beds should be used in urban gardens because the soil is unsuitable for growing crops. Other built elements of community gardens are: fencing, water systems, walkways, tool storage, sandboxes for children, etc. These also need to be built, and of course have a carbon footprint. Urban parks also need to be built, they also have a carbon footprint, so if we go further along the argument, parks should also be demolished, perhaps concreted over, because building and maintaining parks also has an environmental impact.

Another important aspect is that gardens should look good, be safe and easy to maintain. Garden design is essential, and good quality workmanship is perhaps even more important. Urban gardens are essentially civic urban green spaces, and aesthetic appearance and usability are essential. Most community gardens use a lot of recycled materials in their construction, such as demolished bricks, paving slabs, pallets. All of these had to be manufactured once, which has a carbon footprint, transported to site, which has a carbon footprint, and the garden had to be built, which also has a carbon footprint. Recycling, on the other hand, does not create new emissions, at most during transport. Community gardens are essentially energy-efficient facilities.

The large-scale cultivation mentioned in the article means monocultures, optimised cultivation methods and, above all, huge sizes. And urban agriculture is all about small scale, with no endless arable land and instead individual beds. The article makes the mistake of not including in the CO2 value the CO2 burden of manufacturing and operating agricultural machinery. If we add to this the CO2 burden of the long journey from field to plate, transport, refrigeration and processing, the benefits of large-scale production are immediately not so great. Urban agriculture is all about variety and high biodiversity. In 2023, the Böszi Community Garden had 47 species of plants grown by gardeners, and that’s not counting the variety of species. For example, there were at least 10-12 varieties of tomatoes in the garden. In the supermarket, you can buy one or at most two types of tomatoes, the quality and nutrition of which are far below those of your own garden.

Blog post: Numbers in the Community Gardens

The list of arguments against the study could go on for a long time, but it is unnecessary. The really disturbing thing is that this research talks about negligible amounts of carbon dioxide, when on a global scale it is nothing. To show that urban gardens cost a few molecules of CO2 more than outdoor production, while megatonnes of methane are released from permafrost and deep-sea methane ice, while global transport, aviation, shipping, heating buildings, industry, our very existence, is a burden on the planet, is pathetic. They are taking one negligibly small element and projecting it onto the big picture. Why? Yet again, research that would have been better not done, not moved the world forward at all, a complete end in itself, with worthless results. Or, it all has a distinctly foul smell to it, namely an anti self-sufficiency, anti self-determination attitude. Don’t grow your own food, don’t strive for self-sufficiency, don’t please yourself, instead buy large-scale crops because it’s better and more environmentally conscious than small-scale urban agriculture. Bad taste, a very damaging way of thinking.

I watch the farmers’ protests in Europe, from Germany to the Netherlands to France, and I see something terribly wrong. The misunderstood “eco-consciousness”, this “How dare you?!” mentality, the totally misguided planet-saving, the unprofessional activist attitude, will eventually lead to either nothing to eat or it will be incredibly expensive. I’m telling you now that the hunger riots will mean far more CO2 emissions than the carbon production of community gardens.

Finally, what is missing from the research is how much excess carbon dioxide emissions, such as CO2 exhaled by the authors, were involved in the production of this great research! Now that is waste and pollution!

Food from urban agriculture has carbon footprint six times larger than conventional produce, study shows

A városi mezőgazdaságból származó élelmiszerek szénlábnyoma hatszor nagyobb, mint a hagyományos termékeké, derül ki a tanulmányból

Kaptam egy cikket egy angolul, a városi mezőgazdaság, a közösségi kertek karbon lábnyomáról szól. Az alapfelvetése a tanulmánynak az, hogy a városi kertekben termelt zöldségek hatszor nagyobb CO2 terhelést jelentnek átlagban, mint a szabadföldi, nagyüzemi termelésű zöldségek.

Az érvelés azt mondja, hogy a kertek építésénél felhasznált anyagok, (emelt ágyások anyagigénye, járófelületek, kerítés, vízrendszer) előállításuk során keletkező CO2, mind hozzáadódnak a termények CO2 terheléshez, így a nagy nagyüzemi mezőgazdasági termeléshez képest nagyobb környezeti terhelést jelenetnek. Kiszámolták, hogy hatszor nagyobb a szén-dioxid terhelés. A cikk kitér természetesen az olyan jelenségekre, mint a repülőgépen szállított spárga, vagy az üvegházakban termelt zöldségek környezetterhelésére, és megállapítják, hogy ezekkel szemben a városi kertek jobbak, kisebb az ökológiai lábnyomuk.

Az egyik fő megállapítása a tanulmánynak:

„On average, food produced through urban agriculture emitted 0.42 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents per serving, six times higher than the 0.07 kg CO₂e per serving of conventionally grown produce.”

„A városi mezőgazdaságban előállított élelmiszerek átlagosan 0,42 kilogramm szén-dioxid-egyenértéket bocsátottak ki adagonként, ami hatszor magasabb, mint a hagyományos módon termesztett termékek 0,07 kg CO2/adagja.”

A másik nagyon okos mondat a következő:

“Most of the climate impacts at urban farms are driven by the materials used to construct them—the infrastructure,” Goldstein said. “These farms typically only operate for a few years or a decade, so the greenhouse gases used to produce those materials are not used effectively. Conventional agriculture, on the other hand, is very efficient and hard to compete with.”

“A városi gazdaságok éghajlati hatásainak nagy részét az építésükhöz használt anyagok – az infrastruktúra – okozzák” – mondta Goldstein. “Ezek a farmok jellemzően csak néhány évig vagy egy évtizedig működnek, így az anyagok előállításához felhasznált üvegházhatású gázok nem hasznosulnak hatékonyan. A hagyományos mezőgazdaság ezzel szemben nagyon hatékony, és nehéz vele versenyezni”.”

Na, most azért tegyünk hozzá ehhez néhány gyakorlati észrevételt:

A városi kerteket, közösségi kerteket meg kell építeni. A városban a magánkerteken kívül nincs olyan, hogy szabadföldi termesztés. A városi kertekben emelt ágyásokat kell alkalmazni, mert a talaj alkalmatlan a növénytermesztésre. További épített elemei a közösségi kerteknek: kerítés, vízrendszer, járófelületek, szerszámtároló, homokozó a gyerekeknek, stb. Ezeket is meg kell építeni, ezeknek természetesen megvan a karbon lábnyoma. A városi parkokat is meg kell építeni, annak is van karbon lábnyoma, vagyis ha továbblépünk az érvelés mentén, a parkokat is le kellene bontani, esetleg lebetonozni, mert a parképítés és fenntartás is környezetterhelést jelent.  

Az sem elhanyagolható szempont, hogy a kerteknek jól kell kinézni, biztonságosak legyenek, és könnyen fenntarthatónak. A kert tervezettsége elengedhetetlen, a jó minőségű kivitelezés pedig talán még ennél is fontosabb. A városi kertek alapvetően civilek által fenntartott városi zöldfelületek, elengedhetetlen az esztétikus megjelenés és használhatóság. A legtöbb közösségi kertben nagyon sok újrahasznosított anyagot használnak az építés során, például bontott téglát, járólapokat, pallett – raklapokat. Mindezeket egyszer le kellett gyártani, annak is megvan a CO2 lábnyoma, a helyszínre kellett szállítani, annak is megvan a maga karbon lábnyoma, és a kertet meg kellett építeni, az is CO2 emisszióval jár. Az újrahasznosítással viszont nem keletkezik újabb emisszió, maximum a szállítás során. A közösségi kertek alapvetően takarékos üzemek.

A cikkben emlegetett nagyüzemi termesztés monokultúrákat jelent, optimalizált termesztési eljárásokat, és főleg hatalmas méreteket. A városi mezőgazdaság pedig pont a kis léptékről szól, nincs végtelen termőterület, helyette egyéni ágyások. A cikk ott hibázik, hogy nem számolja bele a CO2 értékbe a mezőgazdasági gépek legyártásának, működtetésének CO2 terhelését. Ha ehhez még hozzá adjuk a szántóföldről az tányérig tartó hosszú utat, szállítás, hűtés, feldolgozás CO2 terhelését, már rögtön nem annyira előnyös a nagyüzemi termesztés.

A városi mezőgazdaság a sokféleségről, a magas biodiverzitásról szól. 2023-ban a Böszi közösségi kertben 47 féle növényt termesztettek a kertészek, és ebbe még nem számoltuk bele a fajtaválasztékot. Például paradicsomból legalább 10-12 fajta volt a kertben. Blogbejegyzés: Számok a kertben.

Sokáig lehet még folytatni az ellenérvek sorolását, de felesleges. Az az igazán zavaró, hogy ez a kutatás elhanyagolható mennyiségű szén-dioxidról beszél, miközben globális léptékben ez semmi. Kimutatni, hogy a városi kertek néhány CO2 molekulával többe kerülnek, mint a szabadföldi termelés, miközben megatonnányi metán szabadul fel a permafrosztból és a mélytengeri metánjégből, miközben a globális szállítás, légi közlekedés, hajózás, épületek fűtése, az ipar, egyáltalán a létünk mekkora teher a bolygónak, szóval szánalmas az egész. Kiemelnek egy elhanyagolhatóan kicsi elemet és kivetítik a nagy egészre. Minek? Megint egy olyan kutatás, amit jobb lett volna nem elvégezni, semennyivel nem mozdította előre a világot, a teljes öncél, értéktelen eredménnyel. Vagy, van az egésznek egy kifejezetten büdös szaga is, mégpedig az önellátás, az önrendelkezés elleni szemlélete. Ne termelj magadnak, ne törekedj az önellátásra, ne okozz magadnak örömöt, helyette vedd meg a nagyüzemi terményeket, mert az jobb és környezet tudatosabb, mint a kis léptékű városi mezőgazdaság. Rossz ízű gondolatsor, kifejezetten kártékony szemlélet.

Nézem az európai gazdák tüntetéseit Németországtól, Hollandián át Franciaországig, és valami rettenetes bajt látok. A rosszul értelmezett „ökotudatosság”, ez a „How dare you?!” mentalitás, a teljesen félreértett bolygómentés, a szakmaiság nélkül aktivista attitűd, végül oda vezet, hogy vagy nem lesz mit enni, vagy elképesztően drága lesz. Most szólok, hogy az éhséglázadások sokkal több CO2 emissziót fognak jelenteni, mint az közösségi kertek szén-dioxid termelése.

Végezetül, hiányzik a kutatásból az, hogy ennek a nagyszerű kutatásnak az elkészítése vajon mennyi felesleges szén-dioxid kibocsátással járt, például a szerzők által kilélegzett CO2?! Na, az a pocséklás és a környezetszennyezés!

The first season of the Böszi Garden ended. I have made all kinds of summaries and now I would like to present a different approach. What numbers can we put on the garden in the year of the garden’s creation?

There are many different numbers, let’s see some of them:

Number of garden meetings, trainings, garden events: 28 occasions

Municipal consultations, designer meetings, building contractor site visits: 19 occasions

Press releases in figures:

9 articles in the local newspaper Hegyvidék

8 news reports in Hegyvidék Tv

1 article in the Magyar Mezőgazdaság newspaper

1 lecture at the MOME, about the creation of a garden, including the creation of the Böszi garden

7 blog posts, mixed in Hungarian and English (I’m a lazy pig for writing so little, I’ll make up for it.)

I was interviewed by 3 graduate students, mainly about the Böszi garden and how I got involved in garden creation and community gardens.

Crop statistics

We have also done “garden statistics” in other gardens in previous years. The idea is to measure all the vegetables and fruits that were grown in the garden that year. The gardeners themselves keep an online crop diary, and then at the end of the season you can add up how much produce the garden and the beds separately have had that season. This is what “garden statistics” looks like.

Although five bed holders did not fill in the table, it appears that there was a large harvest of nearly a tonne. With a total of 47 varieties of vegetables and herbs grown in the garden, it seems that many people have already started experimenting with plants in the first season, which has resulted in a diverse garden and crops.

Clearly the most tomatoes produced was 380.9 kg, with 30.6 kg of green tomatoes, good for pickling. This is true for all gardens, tomatoes are the most popular product. In the Böszi garden, the courgettes produced a very good 154.8 kg, followed immediately by the cucumbers 147.4 kg. Although I think they only planted batatas in 2-3 beds, they still came in at 36.5 kg.

This Excel is interesting, Vazul one of the members from the garden has done a very good job of showing the quantity of crops in the beds. Somewhere very funny. In the Böszi garden the average yield was 29 kg per bed.

How much does this mean in HUF? I started to look for prices for the harvests, but there is a lot of variation, in fact I could only add up the main crops, which came to nearly 2 million forints. In other words, in lower terms, they produced nearly sixty thousand forints per bed, which is more like how much money the gardeners saved by growing what they would otherwise have bought in the shop or market. By comparison, the size of the beds is 6+1 square metres, so it is not at all an underestimate of what can be made from an urban garden. And that’s not to mention the quality, the community, this whole phenomenon on Böszörményi út.

The gardeners also had their costs, this year if I remember correctly the annual bed rent was 5000 Ft, they bought their own cattle manure (2500 Ft/bag, roughly one bag per bed), seeds and seedlings, and their own tools.

Az első szezon a Böszi kertben

Véget ért a XII. kerületi Böszi kert első szezonja, készítettem mindenféle összefoglalókat és most egy másik fajta megközelítést szeretnék leírni.

Mindig fontos a mérhetőség, ez így van a kertekben is, milyen számokat tudunk a kerthez rendelni? Milyen számokat tudunk találni a kertben a kertalakulás évében?

Sokféle számok vannak, lássunk néhányat:

Kertgyűlések, oktatások, kerti események száma: 28 alkalom

Önkormányzati egyeztetések, tervezői találkozók, kivitelezői területbejárások: 19 alkalom

A sajtómegjelenések számokban:

9 cikk a Hegyvidék című helyi lapban

8 híradó riport a Hegyvidék Tv műsorában

1 cikk a Magyar Mezőgazdaság című újságban

1 előadás a MOME-n, a kertalapításról volt szó, ezen belül a Böszi kert alapításáról

7 Blogbejegyzés, magyarul és angolul vegyesen. (Egy lusta disznó vagyok, hogy ennyire keveset írtam, be fogom pótolni.)

3 Diplomázó hallgató készített interjút velem, főleg a Böszi kerten keresztül mondtam el a kertalapítást, illetve a közösségi kerteket.

Terménystatisztika

Más kertekben is csináltunk a korábbi években „kertstatisztikát”. A lényeg az, hogy mérjünk minden zöldséget, gyümölcsöt, amik a kertben teremtek az adott évben. A kertészek maguk vezetnek egy online termésnaplót, aztán a szezon végén össze lehet adni, hogy mennyi terménye volt a kertnek és külön az ágyásoknak az adott szezonban. Így néz ki a „kertstatisztika”.

Bár öt ágyásbérlő nem töltötte ki a táblázatot, de az látszik, hogy bőven volt termés, közel egy tonna. A kertben zöldségek és fűszerek közül összesen 47 fajta termett, látszik, hogy sokan vágtak bele már az első szezonban növénykísérletbe, ennek az eredménye a sokszínűsége a kertnek és a terményeknek.

Egyértelműen a legtöbb paradicsomból termett 380.9 kg, és mellé a zöld paradicsom 30.6 kg, ami savanyúsághoz jó. Ez egyébként minden kertben így van, paradicsom a legkedveltebb termény. A Böszi kertben nagyon szépen termett a cukkini 154,8 kg, majd rögtön utána az uborka 147.4 kg. Bár batátát azt hiszem, hogy csak 2-3 ágyásba ültettek, de így is összejött 36.5 kg.

Érdekes ez az Excel, Vazul az egyik tag a kertből nagyon jól megcsinálta a kimutatást, itt például az ágyásokra vonatkozó termésmennyiség látszik. Valahol nagyon vicces. A Böszi kertben 29 kg termés termett átlagban ágyásonként.

Vajon ez forintban mennyit jelent? Elkezdtem keresni a termésekhez árakat, de nagyon nagy a szórás, igazából a főbb terményeket tudtam csak összeadni, abból jött ki közel 2 millió forint. Vagyis alsó hangon közel hatvanezer forint értékben termeltek az ágyásonként, vagyis inkább ennyi pénzt takarítottak meg a kertészek azzal, hogy megtermelték maguknak azt, amit egyébként megvettek volna a boltban, vagy piacon. Ehhez képest az ágyások mérete 6+1 négyzetméter, szóval egyáltalán nem lebecsülendő, hogy mennyit ki lehet hozni egy városi kertből. És akkor még nem beszéltünk a minőségről, a társaságról, erről az egész jelenségről a Böszörményi úton.

A kertészeknek is voltak költségeik, idén ha jól emlékszem 5000 Ft volt az éves ágyásbérleti díj, maguk vették az érlelt marhatrágyát (2500 Ft/zsák, nagyjából ágyásonként egy zsák), és a magokat és palántákat, és a saját szerszámaikat.

Végezetül, ezek a kert alapadatai

Eredetileg a Konyhakerti Világnapot akartuk megünnepelni, aztán nyílt nap lett belőle, szeptember 2-án szombaton mindenkit szeretettel vártunk a Böszi kertbe. Délután háromtól nyitottuk meg a kapukat, gyakorlatilag folyamatosan jöttek kisebb – nagyobb csoportokban, családok, egyének, sok kerttag elhívta az ismerőseit, barátait, rokonait. Nekem is eljöttek néhányan. Az egész egy kellemes nyár végi délután volt, kaptunk a helyi Bake My Day pékségből finom tócsnikat, kiraktunk az asztalra kostolót a vendégeknek, paradicsomot, fűszernövényeket, mentás és citromos vizet.

Az ilyen események arra jók, hogy a kertészek begyűjtenek egy csomó gratulációt, elismerést, tényleg meghökkentő egy ilyen városi kert, főleg a Böszörményi úton. Nagy a rácsodálkozás, jellemző, hogy mindenki elkezdi mesélni a saját kertészeti kalandjait, főleg a nagymama kertjét régen, meg sokan emlegetik a balkonkert próbálkozásaikat.

Kellemes nap volt, köszönöm a kertészeknek, hogy eljöttek, sokan voltunk, hoztunk egy új színfoltot a Böszörményi útra és ez jó!

Founding of a community garden in the XII. district. January – February

It has been seven months since the establishment of the Böszörményi Road Community Garden in the XIIth district of Budapest, so I thought I would try to go through what happened and what the process of its establishment was like. I will write about the events of the past months in detail.

We have been trying to establish a community garden in the XII district for at least 7-8 years, there have been several negotiations in the past with Mayor Zoltán Pokorni, I have received all kinds of ideas for locations from the Property Management Office, but none of them were suitable for establishing a community garden. The Hegyvidék is one of the few districts in Budapest, where there is simply not a thousand square metres of contiguous open space where an urban garden, a community garden could be established. I have been around the district several times, looking at the courtyards of condominiums, but there simply are none. Most of the district is incredibly built-up, and the rest is suburbs or nature reserves, and there is no open space there either.

In December last year, I was invited to the Mayor’s Office, where I was given a spot in the city, good for the urban garden. This was big news.

The story is that on Böszörményi street, block 20-22 was being redeveloped, two poor quality buildings and all kinds of office buildings, old worthless buildings, but it’s a very big area and very valuable. A new municipally owned building complex was planned, with underground parking (reducing the congested parking on Böszörményi út), shops and service units on the ground floor and apartments above.

There were problems around the demolition, dust, noise, huge heavy machinery moving around, and even a large wall fell on Böszörményi út, fortunately no one was hurt. They managed to get the whole neighbourhood angry, there was public resistance.

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The demolition was finished last autumn, the underground garage was dug, but in the meantime there was a war in the neighbourhood, energy prices were very high, inflation was out of control and above all bank lending rates were skyrocketing, the interest rate was around 20%, which completely thwarted the investment, it would be a heavy cost burden to build this building now. They have stopped everything by saying that until external conditions improve, construction will be postponed. However, after the demolition, something had to be done with the empty space, so there should be a temporary car park and a community garden. The car park is a great idea, it has improved the parking problems around Böszörményi Road, and the garden is a great idea too.

That was the area

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The first meeting

I was invited to a meeting with Mayor Zoltán Pokorni. The meeting was very well organised.

Summary of the meeting, the circumstances of the establishment of the Böszi garden:

First and foremost, it will be a temporary garden, as soon as the economic situation allows, the bank lending rate will drop significantly, the municipality will continue the investment and the garden will be closed. This should be made clear to all future gardeners. We do not know for how long the garden will be there, but we do know one event for sure, and that is the Garden Closing Party, the Farewell Party. At some point we will say goodbye to this garden.

This includes the next aspect of making the garden relocatable-reusable, in case a space is found somewhere later, i.e. the raised beds can be re-installed in the new location. If there is no new garden, they could be rebuilt in the gardens of schools, kindergartens, condominiums for the use of the residents.

The next important consideration was that the future urban gardeners should be residents of the local area, a neighbourhood community. These are Szoboszlai street, Böszörményi street, Beethoven street and a few others also from the neighbourhood, but they also live 5-10 minutes walking distance.

The project is hosted by Krisztina Fonti, deputy mayor of the city, who has been pushing for the gardens in the past. The construction of the garden was managed by the Urban Development Office. All the other coordination was done by the Green Office, with Emese Décsi as the direct contact person and Zoltán Rózsa, the Office Manager, managing the garden establishment at the organisational level.

The opening was scheduled for May – June, which I felt was a bit short, but as it turned out, it was a reasonable deadline.

On the 1st of January we signed a one year contract, I was in charge of garden management, garden and community coordination, consultancy, and organising the community and gardener part of the construction. Garden establishment.

The area itself, the site of the future garden.

The area looked like a bomb crater, a construction pit, it was just tragic. There was an old photo from the Second World War of a garden being built in a bomb crater, so that’s what I thought of when I first saw the pit. World War II, bomb crater garden, England.

There is a relatively large, flat area where a gravel parking area for 100 cars has been created, and next to it is the pit that has already been dug for the future underground car park. This has been marked as the community garden. The garden will be in a pit on the hill, which also seemed like a joke. The conditions were terrible, it was a net putty. I’ve never seen such an impossible site, it seemed a nice job to do a garden here. At the same time, it is a very well- sunny area, the nature of the pit, gives the garden a natural frame, a boundary. In addition, it is directly connected to the Böszörményi road, so that the future garden is one storey below the road level, which means that people walking along the Böszörményi road can see the garden from above. This is a novelty, the landscape design become very important, and it was foreseeable that the future garden would be a very strong visual element of Böszörményi út. There was no water, clearly tube water should be used. There was no topsoil, it would have to be brought in and it was clear that only high beds were an option.

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23. January Launch presentation, first applicants.

The first step was to organise a vision presentation, a public forum about the future garden.  The venue was a large meeting room in the municipality. Posters were put up on the doors of the houses in Szoboszlai, Böszörményi, Beethoven Street. On the posters, we announced the Garden Launch lecture for 23 January.

I have a lot of presentations like this, this is my eighth garden, I can present about the garden very well. Usually 45-50 minutes Power Point presentation and then another 50 minutes for questions and answers. It’s a familiar trend that those who attend the first garden launch presentation tend to be the most dedicated garden members later on, they become the “hard core”, the most active members of the garden.

Fot this event, you will need a sign-up sheet, pens, and by then you should have a rough idea of the community development and education agenda.

The sign-up sheet is needed to start internal communication, in this case an email group, by writing down their name, address, phone number and email address.

Nearly thirty people came, it was good, although at the beginning an angry lady came in and interrupted the beginning of the presentation, but then she left and we had a useful and understandable presentation, and many valuable questions, very positive attitude, hopeful expectation. 21 people signed the attendance sheet, they were automatically added to the list of the members of the garden community. It was particularly funny that several people commented that other municipal projects should organise similar introductory presentations, it would make everyone’s life easier if they were informed.

The first article about the garden was published in the Hegyvidék newspaper. This is the district newspaper, Village Voice. Since then, every fortnightly issue of the newspaper has had an article about the garden, and the newspaper has very correctly traced the birth of the garden, the first season.

Questionnaire and formal application.

I wrote a circular to everyone who registered for the attendance sheet at the Garden Launch and sent a link to a questionnaire.

The questionnaire is a good way to see in advance who the potential gardeners will be, we can ask about motivations, gardening knowledge, age, education. We also asked them to write some introductory sentences and why they want to become community garden members. In addition, an electronic questionnaire like this keeps a strict record of the responses received in the order in which they were completed, so it will be a great help later on when managing the waiting list. The same questionnaire was filled in by all those who applied afterwards. Some summary results from the gardeners.

Age, Occupation, Gardening skills, ect.

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Community development and gardening training launched

The coming months were busy, with several strands of garden creation starting to take off.

One part was to work with garden members, community development, or at least to tell the candidates roughly how the garden will work, what the first season will be like, what to expect, what chronology to anticipate, what the major milestones will be. There was also talk about the garden contract, the garden rules and the garden responsibilities. In addition, we voted on the first season’s “bed rental fee”. Every garden has costs, tools, seeds, prints, some costs. These are paid for by the community from a common fund, the garden fund, and we have elected a garden treasurer to manage this.

The teacher was Zsuzsanna Helfné Szabó, a good friend, we have done gardens together before, and it was clear that she would be a well-prepared, determined and good gardener-teacher.

In the following four months, we had eight garden assembly meetings.

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Closed concept plan tender

Design is one of the most important early steps for any garden – it will determine its usability, its visual appeal and its community life. Without design, you should not build a community garden and it is important that an experienced landscape architect designs the garden, the urban community garden is a separate chapter within landscape architecture, it is good to have a designer who has designed one or has been a community gardener, knows what expectations and features to look for in the design.

We were in a hurry here, so we invited a closed call for designers who have been involved in community garden projects before.

Design elements:

Broadly speaking, the main design elements of a community garden are: fencing, gate, cargo gate, raised beds, water, water network, water displays, walkways, community space, sandpit, pallet furniture, tool storage, herb bedding, composting, compost bin placement, water drainage. Actually, all these features should be in a kind of harmony. It turns out later that the design task is much more complex than that.

Then there are the local specificities: sunlight and shade, water, accessibility, area,  connection with the outside world and, of course, the visual aspect. A community garden is not a park, not the usual urban green space, but perhaps more complex than that. The designer needs to see this.

Kétszeri Adam’s plan

Adam participated in the Békási kert concept plan competition as a student, sometime around 2012. We did a concept design competition with the Department of Landscape Architecture of the then Corvinus University, it was the “university course week”. That’s when the idea of a horseshoe-shaped bed came up. The U-shaped bed is the main element in Adam’s design, but the plan is rather oversized, especially the community space is missing. In the first concept design exercise, the under-utilised space above the garden was an issue, and Adam designed a bike path for this. This area was later dropped from the design brief.

Ági Szabó’s plan

Ági Szabó has been involved in the design of the Első Kis-Pesti Kert 12 years ago, she is very familiar with the world of community gardens, she knows how these gardens work from her own experience. It was a good project, but Ági had to step down because she had found a job in a landscape architect’s studio.

Orsolya Zita Szalai’s plan

The plan is very crowded, overusing the given area, but the richness of detail, the coordination of the different garden elements comes out well from the concept. It is also important that she has delivered a plan of saleable quality, she makes good use of landscape architect’s design programs, the result is a detailed, well thought-out plan, the work is the mark of a careful designer.

Orsolya Zita Szalai was the next best choice, she took the design process through, and as it turned out, she was a very good choice.

To be continued.