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The practice
2 Hints for an evaluation
2.1 Strenghts
Strengths: "striking new roots"
Aside from proving a place to do seeding, planting and harvesting, the sites of international gardens serve also other purposes: to create communication, cooperation and new perspectives for and between the members of the gardens. To create an opportunity for the people to gain new ground and, similar to a plant, "strike new roots" is the spirit and purpose of the intercultural gardens. Here migrants can participate, make use of the knowledge they bring along, get to know new entities, ideas, mechanisms – and are able to develop and accomplish their own life perspectives.
The website of the “Foundation Interculture” mentions several reasons why the international gardens should be considered as real sites of integration:
• They enable people to ground, embed and find peace for themselves.
• Intercultural exchange and communication takes place
• They enable women to acquire space for themselves.
• Gardening is work of remembrance, in which sorrows and traumas are also processed.
• The gardeners can connect to their own culture of hospitality but nevertheless are able to independently locate themselves in the new environment
• The physical-corporal-sensual dimension of "striking roots" can be experienced.
• They enable a re-locating and a new range of possibilities to act.
• The migrants get the chance to reflect and mirror "their own", to that of others
• The refugees become public actors who highlight the universal problems of a country of immigration and make them a central theme
• They lead new ways - from a piece of land to a language course.
Examples:
For Fariz Kamilov the little peace of land he can cultivate means a lot: it is a lot of independency for him, and a way to get a away from the sorrow that are with him usually. He is a asylum seeker originally from Azerbaijan, two of his childs are wheelchair-bound, and the whole family of five people lives in two little rooms. Fariz is waiting for a job, but still the work permit hasn’t been granted yet. Thinking about “the garden” he says: “I go with a lot of problems to the garden, but when I am there, I can forget about them.”
2.2 Critical Points
In general it is hard to find critical points about the international garden projects, because they all seem to function well once they have overcome the difficulties in gathering members, finding a place etc. Of course, as the each single gardening practise depends on the members and simply the given situation, there can raise problems: are there enough people who want and can commit to the project, is there enough space and can it financially be afforded, and are there competence and openness to negotiate with politicians?
If one reads about the single projects there are sometimes obstacles that have to be overcome in the beginning, such as the just mentioned ones. At this point the foundation Interculture might be able to assist and to give advice. On their website, for instance, in the section “how to build up an international garden” one can already find the answers to the very basic questions (here).
2.3 Lessons Learnt
- Themes
The different “themes” that are touched by the international garden programme are various and many. However some can be seen as the most obvious and important one:
• Quality of life: having one’s own garden and the chance of escaping from too small homes means a big improvement. Besides the already mentioned psychological dimension shouldn’t be underestimated: carrying a certain kind of responsibility, creating something new and experiencing the outcome of one’s action can contribute to the self-perception of migrant families.
• Gender-aspect: especially in case of the women that used to live in a culture where there was only little public space for them to act in, it is important to have a place to go besides – so to say – home and supermarket. Intercultural gardens project workers also organise special language courses for women.
- Methodology
The motto “integration through participation” fits well to describe the methodology of international gardens. The realisation of each project is not done by politicians, social worker or others, but by the very members – “gardeners” and families with a migratory background and from Germany – to create a project to their own needs and expectations. Through this the participants are actively integrated in a city landscape shaping process, which might – on the long run – foster their self-perception and the perception of others. It is also important to mention that German families are also wanted to be active in the gardening project, so that it is not a “migrant-programme” but a true example of intercultural life. To establish German as the general language of communication is also done to help people, especially women, to train their language skills and make it easier for them to learn and practise it.
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