Monday, September 3, 2012

mine, yours, ours

The Hungarian commentators living in Hungary decried a lot on the Facebook the Allmende-Kontor community garden in Berlin. közösségi kertet. They were mainly upset by its scrappy, makeshift character. In fact, it looks as if a petty bourgeois paradise had been shaken together with a hippie commune. The result is a surprisingly peaceful mixture, not devoid of kitchy and parodic elements. Everyone can have his or her little corner, for which he or she has responsibility, and a combination of these shows a simultaneously jovial, eroded and proliferating impression.
In any case, Berliners really like it, and the waiting lists of the community garden which started with 300 plots in a part of the former Tempelhof Airport, along the Oderstraße, are always full. Townspeople grow food, change plants, do gardening and relax in the former airport, by now completely encircled by residential areas.


Information here, further pictures here and here: What do you think?
Should people buy expensive designer furniture, or make out of pallets whatever he can? Maybe should they jointly knock it together? Or should they buy plastic chairs in the Tesco? Or wait for the municipality to assist them with cast iron street furniture?
Or perhaps they should not bring furniture at all in such small plots, as one of the commentators has suggested?
Should they set up their small gardens in a similar way, and agree among each other that they would only plant things there that are in harmony with each other? How would you do differently? Or is it all right as it is now?