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Description
According to the ‘Polska wieś 2020’ report the attractiveness of countryside as the place of residence is growing. Especially suburban villages are changing at a very fast pace. Shopping malls and numerous houses and apartments are being built there. In our home Olsztyński district (Warmińsko-Mazurskie province) we can observe tensions between migrants and natives. Sometimes newcomers wish to change the space to make it more urban which is not always approved of by locals. Moreover, diagnoses caried out in these communes show that people living there expect better environmental education.We will address these two challenges by starting in the Gietrzwałd, Stawiguda and Purda communes 10 social gardens with the use of permaculture – apart from pro-environmental aspect, they will also serve as a place of integration for new and indigenous inhabitants. We will organise small festivals which will create an opportunity to get to know one another better. People who have been living there for years and those who have recently moved in will be invited to take part in workshops on social and permaculture gardens, edible plants and functioning of such gardens all over the world. We will organise exhibitions devoted to organic gardening and permaculture principles in our gardens.Our first partner is the Urban Space and Road Maintenance Office, at the Department of Environment and Planning in Reykjavik, which we will pay a study visit to in order to learn how to properly run social gardens and how to engage inhabitants in this initiative. Other partners include the Gietrzwałd and Stawiguda communes as well as the Nowalijki’ Countryside Homemaker Club in Nowa Wieś providing us with land for gardens. Polish partners will also help us engage local communities.
Summary of project results
The aim of our project was to integrate, activate and educate the communities of the three local municipalities in the vicinity of the town of Olsztyn (Warmińsko-Mazurskie Voivodeship). The premise was to create a place of integration between the newcomers and ''old'' inhabitants of these communities. Such integration is a challenge, as people moving from cities to smaller towns tend to be isolated and lack involvement in the local community. Sometimes the local community is also prejudiced against the newcomers and conflicts or misunderstandings can arise.
We set up 14 small, suburban community gardens. We set them up together with local villagers and residents, with local NGOs, senior citizens'' clubs and housewives'' circles. The activities aimed at facilitating cooperation and bringing together local communities from the same area, but coming from often very different backgrounds. We managed to involved over 100 external actors in the project. During the two years of the project, we conducted more than 70 different activities (workshops, exhibitions, information meetings, etc.) for more than 3,000 people. As part of study visits, we visited Nordic community gardens in Iceland and Norway and established a community garden under the Arctic Circle in Nesna (Norway). We also organised gardening workshops in school gardens.
We also ran a public awareness campaign that reached more than 300,000 users in the internet and more than 3,000 directly. We gave 30 radio interviews, 3 TV interviews and 16 newspaper interviews. We also developed 12 educational videos.
We surveyed participants in the gardening workshops to evaluate adequacy and effectiveness of the project. 77% reported increased environmental and aesthetic awareness and 85% confirmed the acquisition of good gardening habits and skills. However, it was not the gardens that were most important in the project. Much more important was the process of creating them and the skills that the project participants acquired. Even more important were the relationships that were established between participants coming from different backgrounds. The project allowed a dialogue to be established between community groups with different views on the need to protect the environment and had an impact on alleviating rural conflicts. The attitude of the local community towards the newcomers has also changed, and both have become involved in the creation of community gardens.
Summary of bilateral results
The Edible Landscape project benefited from having foreign partners in a big way. The project partners were organisations from Norway and Iceland. As part of study visits, among other things, we visited Nordic community gardens and established a community garden under the Arctic Circle in Nesna (Norway). We also conducted gardening workshops in school gardens. We recorded interviews with Norwegian and Icelandic gardening enthusiasts. We proved that gardening knows no borders and it is hard to find places on the planet where edible plants cannot grow. The ''In the Landscape'' Foundation operates internationally and the opportunity to make more contacts has been extremely important to us and helpful in the further development of the organisation. From the partners we learned how to work with local communities and how to realise community gardens. Thanks to the knowledge gained and learning about Scandinavian realities after the completion of the Edible Landscape project, we visited Denmark and Sweden in May 2024 and started working with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.Through the opportunity to conduct horticultural workshops with school students in the Norwegian towns of Kjerringoy and Bodo (Vågøne community garden), we learned how to work with a community group we had not yet worked with. It was also important for us to participate in a seminar on school gardens for Norwegian teachers and educators (Bodo, Bodin 4H-gård) and a seminar on edible weeds at the Nesna Museum. Through these, we exchanged experiences and were inspired by activities carried out by others.Having foreign partners in the project, significantly raised its prestige. Our project was noticed and appreciated in Europe. It was selected as one of the final five projects representing Poland in The Intercultural Achievement Award of the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, in the category of sustainable development.