Alex on Exchange: May 2012

Today’s word means “small garden”, specifically the many small gardens that often make up community garden plots in Germany. But 24 year-old men aren’t really the typical demographic for gardeners, so in order to understand why I give a damn about small gardens you will need some biographical background on me.

When I graduated from Drake, withdrawal from school hit me hard. For the past 17 years, I had had some sort of class Monday through Friday and then all of a sudden nothing. Cold Turkey. It was a rough time, but I decided that maybe, as an adult, I should cultivate a hobby or two that didn’t involve school. Day drinking, I later decided, did not count as a hobby. I tooled around with computer programming, cycling, crochet, and lots of other stuff, but none of it was that fulfilling. I managed to hold out about 3 months before I caved in and enrolled myself in a class. I’ve always loved plants, and I decided that the Iowa Master Gardener Program with its 60-some hours of initial coursework would kill two birds with one stone. Namely, I could get back in a classroom and get rid of my shakes, and I could also cultivate an interesting new hobby.

In the master gardener classes, I looked…out of place. The average age of the other master gardeners is somewhere in the high 50’s, and the gender balance is heavily skewed in the feminine direction. Despite this initial awkwardness, I loved it there! Some very very interesting people are master gardeners. It ranged from jovial high school chemistry teachers to no-nonsense FBI field agents, and, though their personalities are varied, they are all welcoming and affable people. I got involved with the committee that built and maintains the gardens at the State Fairgrounds, and before our first meeting, I sort of expected it to basically be an old ladies’ tea circle. When I got to the restaurant, the other gardeners were already there, and the restaurant had run out of beer because of them. Needless to say they are a fun group of people. So, this is where my interest in gardening and consequently in the small gardens of Germany comes from.

OK, so down to business. These gardens I mentioned, they are everywhere. Since most German houses are built close to each other, there isn’t space for a yard. As near as I can tell, there isn’t a German word for “yard” meaning just a space of grass with a garden around a house. “Hof” is close but is more of a courtyard or farmyard. Consequently, many homeowners will lease a small garden space on the outskirts of the city and plant a garden there. They usually aren’t single gardens, but rather several hundred together. These garden clubs are beautiful, and the area around my dorm and work is filled with them.

Most people build a small house on the garden property to hold tools and whatnot, but some of the houses are more luxurious. In this case they function more like a small cabin or a ‘dacha’ (a Russian word that I learned recently and for some reason find really cool). The garden areas are very serene places and the people clearly put a lot of work into the gardens. Some people use them for vegetable growing, but mostly they are just for visual enjoyment.

I don’t know how popular this type of garden is in the rest of Europe, but the conditions that led to them in Germany aren’t unique to Germany, so my guess is that other places would have them too. If you know for sure about this, let me know. I’m curious.