The Rise and Fall of Public Urban Gardens: Four Cases from in and around Copenhagen

Abstract

This chapter presents four cases of urban garden projects in and around Copenhagen, Denmark, started between 2011 and 2013: Prags Have, Byhaven 2200, Byhaven Sundholm, and Havnehaverne. All four urban gardens were community-based and public, yet they varied widely in their organisation, management, funding, and status of the sites they occupied. While two of the gardens were started by cultural activists, the others were the initiative of the municipality and a private land developer. All of them shared a vision of not only growing produce but also integrating spaces for social inclusion and community gatherings. Looking into their underlying value system and organisational structure allows us to compare how the different typologies of urban gardens would impact their ability to thrive and flourish. The authors were particularly interested in the agendas pursued by the communities who managed them, how these agendas related to the specific site and context, and how the communities negotiated public access requirements with creating an enduring gardening community. As both bottom-up projects closed after 4 to 6 years, it is relevant to look into what resources were needed to run them and what led to their ultimate closure.

1 Introduction

Over the last 15 years, a great number of urban gardens have emerged in Copenhagen and other cities in Denmark. These gardens have introduced into the city fabric new spatial aesthetics and social practices around the process of vegetable production. The main components of these spaces are plants and soil in raised planters built from recycled euro pallets, seating, compost bins, and toolsheds.

In the Western world, urban gardens and other temporary urban spatial projects have become a visually recognisable typology across urban areas (Skytt-Larsen et al., 2022). Urban gardens have often sprung up on vacant lots and cracks in the urban fabric and have given room to a style of management and maintenance that differs radically from those used in traditional urban open spaces. In addition to aesthetics and materiality, they share approaches and visions, not only about how we can grow food but also about how cultivating food can be a vehicle for social collective activities in public spaces. The process of growing greens can be a metaphor for and at the same time a concrete measure for nurturing and cultivating living things – including plants, animals, humans, and communities.

Many of the urban gardens are run by groups of cultural activists committed to creating a greener and more socially just city through bottom-up initiatives and experimentation with urban form-making. They share visions of how we can grow and harvest our own vegetables and how gardening practices can become meaningful activities in the city. The place-making and social dimensions of urban gardening, along with visions for greening the city and local food production, are driving forces behind many urban gardening projects. Other practical and political agendas are the promotion of regenerative nature management methods and permaculture.

Other urban gardens are created and operated by cities, developers, and organisations to support a variety of strategies, from urban transformation and cultivating new neighbourhoods to public participation and social cohesion. Across Danish cities, urban gardens are used as strategic tool in urban planning and policy (Jensen et al., 2012). Public, private and civic organisations have learned from the knowledge gathered through the activist-driven urban gardening practices: how to design and manage space, cultivate atmosphere, do citizen outreach, and facilitate participation. Urban gardens have proved their worth as a way to achieve political objectives, such as creating citizenship, green and social regeneration of residential areas, citizen volunteering, good neighbourliness, and temporary activation of vacant sites (Jensen et al., 2012).

In 2015, the City of Copenhagen launched a decade long vision for public urban life ‘Fællesskab København’ (Copenhagen in Common) that aimed to cocreate ‘a living city’, ‘a city with an edge’, and a responsible city’ (Københavns Kommune, 2015a). That year – and clearly intended as a part of this vision – the city published a handbook for how to start an urban garden on private or public vacant lots, or as a part of existing public spaces (Københavns Kommune, 2015b). The publication marked the culmination of a wave of new common urban gardens in Copenhagen. It also outlined some of the many challenges that public urban gardens can face in the city, from finding and legally renting a plot and organising initiatives to meeting public access requirements and cleaning up pollution.

This book chapter presents the story of four urban gardens in and around Copenhagen, Denmark started between 2011 and 2013. All four urban gardens were community-driven and open to the public but varied widely in their organisation, management, funding, and urban contexts. Two of these urban gardens were bottom-up citizen initiatives, while the two others were part of formal urban development; one was started by a private developer and the other was part of a municipal area renewal project.

The authors were particularly interested in the agendas pursued by the communities who manage the urban gardens, how these agendas relate to the specific site and context, and how the urban garden initiators negotiated demands for public access while creating a lasting urban gardening community. After 4 to 6 years, both of the bottom-up initiatives had ended, so it is relevant to look into what resources were needed to run the urban gardens and what might have led to their closure. The chapter borrows from the authors’ direct knowledge of the cases and from various written and online sources.

2 Urban Agriculture Cases

Prags Have, PB43, Copenhagen 2011–2015

Byhaven 2200, Nørrebro Park, Copenhagen 2012–2018

Havnehaverne, Opdagelsen, Søndre Havn, Køge 2013 – ongoing

Byhaven, Sundholm, Copenhagen 2013 – ongoing

2.1 Prags Have

Prags Have (translated Prags Garden) was a temporary urban garden and common space occupying a post-industrial site in the Amager Øst district of Copenhagen that operated between 2011 and 2015. Owned by the Dutch Akzo Nobel, the former Sadolin factory was leased to the cultural entrepreneurs ‘Giv rum’ that transformed the site into the shared community PB43 hosting creative startups, cultural collaborative activities, as well as the urban garden Prags Have (Andersen & Toft-Jensen, 2012).

The garden was started by a self-organised group of ten committed students and cultural activists, who poured all their creative energy into creating and running the place. None of the initiators had any green competencies but had experience and skills around community building, cultural management, and urban design. Their main agenda was to create an urban practice that could involve local citizens, and they were interested in the shared spatial practices that the garden could become a catalyst for (Andersen & Toft-Jensen, 2012). Though privately owned, Prags Have ran as an open community space with full public access. So that more people would get involved in the day-to-day management, the group formed a citizen association with the aim to be replaced later on by a local citizen association.

Prags Have covered a 230-square-metre triangular site. The 140 planting boxes were built from euro pallets that could be moved around easily to enable the constant reorganisation of the garden and to elevate the planting areas from ground soil. Other amenities included a kitchen, seating areas, shrubs, hedges, a tree house, a chicken coop, and a soil pile. As there was no ownership of the individual planting beds, everyone could participate in growing and harvesting the crops. The produce would either be consumed on-site at community dinners or sold to raise money to support activities in the garden.

Prags Have hosted numerous social events inviting local people and others interested in joining planting days, educational workshops, and community dinners advertised via Facebook events and posters placed around the neighbourhood (Prags Have FB). As the initiators had limited gardening skills, the process of building and cultivating the urban garden became a shared learning experience.

The events attracted some local residents and especially children from neighbouring social housing estates were drawn to the garden and used it as a playground. However, most of the participants in gardening and community dinners were residents of Copenhagen who shared the founders’ interest in creative approaches to city-making and urban events, and were attracted by the garden’s aesthetics and its successful social gatherings.

With their strong vision for Prags Have, the project initiators managed to create an urban garden that was loved by many and served as a model for how to organise and run community activities. The atmosphere was welcoming, and a large crowd of visitors attended the organised events or hung out informally in the space. Prags Have also hosted activities for the local municipal office, as the garden matched their agenda for increasing spatial and social activities in the neighbourhood. Only the production of vegetables proved to be inconsistent, perhaps because no one had clear responsibility over specific planting boxes. Moreover, projects often started but were not followed upon, and it could prove difficult for newcomers to join and participate in the gardening process.

The urban gardeners wanted to put their energy into community building and gardening but spent most of their time addressing technical and legal challenges around soil conditions or fundraising. The discovery of ground contamination proved challenging to solve. While the Copenhagen municipality supported Prags Have as part of a greater urban strategy, its regulations demanded sudden new and costly measures to address surface coverage, accessibility, and more (Andersen & Toft-Jensen, 2012).

The spatial practices of Prags Have were a tool for collaboration and negotiation both within the urban gardening community and its space and within the external world through fundraising, communication, applications, and the establishing of a dialogue with municipalities, land owners, and neighbours around legal issues and access considerations.

Overwhelmed by administrative challenges and being unsuccessful in establishing a sustainable local group that could take over, the founders eventually ran out of steam. Many looked for more stable jobs, started families, and were unable to help with time- and resource-consuming gardening, facilitation, and management tasks. For the founders, the garden was a stepping stone into positions in the cultural sphere, art world, or urban development. Prags Have also inspired many new community garden projects that had the social and cultural collective as the main driver.

In 2015, 4 years after it started, Prags Have hosted for a few months a school called ‘Den Grønne Friskole’ (Green Free School), bringing new life into the space. Eventually, the Pelican self-storage company bought the site and tore down all existing structures and gardens to establish a warehouse (Prags Have FB) (Figs. 5.1 and 5.2).

Fig. 5.1

Prags Have sat on a corner site furnished with an eclectic collection of colourful planting beds and a rich variation of seating possibilities. (Photo: Bettina Lamm)

Fig. 5.2

The ground surface of Prags Have had to be covered with a membrane with pebbles on the top to protect against the polluted soil beneath. This required ample time and economic resources. (Photo: Bettina Lamm)

2.2 Byhaven 2200

Byhaven 2200 was an urban community garden located in a public park in the dense city district of Nørrebro in Copenhagen. As a bottom-up initiative. ‘Byhaven 2200’ began in 2012 with the creation of an association that shaped the visions and regulations for a community garden that remained active until 2018 (Urbangardening.dk).

The location of Byhaven 2200 was unusual, as the garden was built in the former dog area within the public green park ‘Ny Nørrebroparken’. The materiality, detailing, and processes were a contrast to the surrounding park, yet it fitted, as the park was divided into smaller sections to make room for different programs and community initiatives. Byhaven received permission from the municipality to use the public space in exchange for an assurance that the garden would be publicly accessible and welcome all following the municipal requirements for urban gardens on publicly owned land (Københavns Kommune, 2015b).

The garden space consisted of 20 DIY (do-it-yourself) raised planting beds built in uneven shapes from half-round barked rafters ‘skiers’ (Dolleris 2014a). Other features included a pizza oven, a toolshed, water tanks, compost site, various seating arrangements, and many small self-built projects. The garden was a gathering place for urban farming enthusiasts and a source of inspiration for initiatives around permaculture gardening and community building (Urbangardening.dk).

Run by a citizens’ association, Byhaven 2200 was based on nine principles informed by permaculture theories and practices that through the cultivation of plants, and ethics of stewardship aim to contribute positively to the local environment and community (Byhaven 2200, Dolleris 2014b).

Every Saturday, Byhaven hosted well-attended gardening workdays open to everyone. Besides gardening, the space served as a hub for social events around pizza making and music. Much effort went into discussing management practices, how to organise the working days, how to communicate and recruit gardeners, and how to distribute maintenance tasks. Educational signs explaining what was in the planting boxes and how they should be cared for were placed across the garden and planting beds. A key concern became the sharing of workload across volunteers, as participants often seemed more interested in socialising than in gardening.

The garden’s popularity as a public space and hang-out area proved to be a challenge, with different needs, expectations to be addressed. The agreement with the municipality was that the site would be accessible to all and become one of the park’s public areas. The publicness goal was consistent with Byhaven’s visions of community and inclusivity, and an important question was how to accommodate the more vulnerable groups of citizens minimizing potential conflicts with other user groups. With its material and aesthetic variations of planting beds, colours and vegetation, and cosy corners and seating, the garden became a home base for many individuals who could not find space elsewhere.

The nine permaculture-inspired principles were supplemented by a list of ten more practical ‘commandments’ to inform people’s conduct and behaviour in the garden, including keeping a good tone, disposing of trash, not urinating in the garden, and keeping dogs calm (Poveda 2015). Obviously, there were challenges around how to be in and care for the garden. Pee, dogs, cleaning up, trash, substance abuse, and a sense of unsafety became themes that the garden group had to consider in their gardening visions.

In 2018, due to a lack of resources, Byhaven 2200 finally closed, and its plants and built elements were removed (urbangardening.dk). Without a core group that would commit to the continuous management of the garden, including handling contracts with the city, the site was eventually bulldozed by the municipality of Copenhagen (Tantrumpanda 2019). In a slightly ironic paper, garden activist Tantrumpanda observed that Byhaven 2200 had many ‘likes’ but not enough local committed participants as many had moved since the garden’s inception. He also commented about people’s interest in so many other things beyond gardening:

You are in an urban garden, but you really want to have a farm. [...] You are in an urban garden, but you really want to do interviews for your university. [...] You are in an urban garden, but you really want to play guitar. [...] You are in an urban garden, but you really want to make pizza.

(Tantrumpanda 2019)

As the first urban garden to become nestled in a public urban park, Byhaven 2200 illustrated how spatial practices can connect and create community within the citiy’s public spaces. It also showed that managing and tending to an urban garden requires resources that go well beyond what is available in an exclusively volunteer-run project (Figs. 5.3 and 5.4).

Fig. 5.3

Byhaven 2200 with its edge of vegetation and planting beds towards Ny Nørrebro Park. (Photo: Bettina Lamm)

Fig. 5.4

Entering Byhaven 2200 you were welcomed with guidelines for how to use and care for the garden. (Photo: Bettina Lamm)

2.3 Byhaven Sundholm

Sundholm district is an area where several municipal institutions that host different spaces, resources, and activities for some of the city’s most vulnerable citizens are located. Amidst this historic district, in 2013 the municipal area regeneration agency, in close collaboration with the adjacent activity centre for vulnerable citizens and municipal social service, established the urban garden Byhaven Sundholm (Konradsen et al., 2013).

The urban garden site is open and publicly accessible and flanked by a bicycle path and a social housing estate on one side and a fenced high-security institution on the other. The urban context is complex with many different types of ‘neighbours.’ Across the street are newer buildings, such as the new Danish television headquarters, banks, offices, and hotels in the new district of Ørestaden.

The garden itself is an intimate oasis-like space with planting beds, lush vegetation, a greenhouse, a chicken coop, rabbits, and a bonfire pit. It is a picturesque and cosy place, which stands in stark contrast to its surroundings. Everyone can come here to garden or recreate. Its public facilities are clearly marked, recycling stations are available, and simple gardening tools are easy to find guided by signage describing how to use the garden and where to find things.

Early in the process, a strategic decision was made to let the activity centre users be part of the startup and establishment of the garden before inviting other local institutions and neighbours to join in (Konradsen et al., 2013). This ensured that vulnerable citizens would be welcome in the garden as the pioneers of the space. Citizens can come and find employment in the activity centre to maintain the garden or feed the chickens (Lygum, 2021).

Partly a social worker, partly a farmer, a staff person manages projects and supports citizens. According to him, even people with substance abuse problems can join as long as they are ‘contactable’ (Lygum, 2021). The garden project is a bridge-building initiative between vulnerable citizens, dwellers of Sundholm, and the neighbouring community. Besides activity centre workers, residents can get access to individual planting beds, and neighbouring schools and institutions use the garden for educational purposes.

The diversity of users is unique, and most of the social work goes into creating a sense of safety and acceptance for all. This is also where some of the vulnerable citizens can come and seek rest if they have been quarantined from the homeless centre at Sundholm.

At times things do get stolen or burned, and morning clean-ups might require the removal of discarded bottles and containers (Lygum, 2021). The manager stays in constant dialogue with the many different groups to maintain respect for the place and keep it open in a continuous process of cultivation of care. Everyone should feel welcome and everyone should feel responsible. This unique balance of rights and responsibilities makes Byhaven Sundholm a success story for the constant care and attention public landscapes require (Figs. 5.5 and 5.6).

Fig. 5.5

Byhaven Sundholm with planting beds and greenhouse viewed from the public path that crosses through the garden. (Photo: Bettina Lamm)

Fig. 5.6

Around Byhaven Sundholm there are educational signs describing where to find and how to use different garden features. Here a sign shows the way to the compost. (Photo: Bettina Lamm)

2.4 Havnehaverne

Opdagelsen (The Discovery) is an open space in the harbour area of Søndre Havn in Køge, a post-industrial site currently transforming into a new urban district. The developer Køge Kyst initiated a series of temporary urban projects within the open spaces to attract citizens and cultivate new uses and practices amidst the former industrial sites. The ‘phase zero’ of the planning strategy aimed at cultivating ‘The Life before the City’ (Køge Kyst, 2011).

One of these projects was the creation of the urban garden ‘Havnehaverne’. The project was developed in partnership with Det Grønne Hus (Green projects municipality), that also led the process, BOGL Landscape Architects, and the social carpentry project Køge Bugt Projektcenter. The idea for a community gardening space emerged in 2012 at a local culinary school, as a result of the positive experiences gained with the piloting of a bookable mobile kitchen (Køge Kyst, Opdagelsen). The kitchen was an art piece created in 2012 by Jesper Åbille for the site-specific exhibition Urban Play – another initiative cultivating the former industrial spaces for recreational uses (Lamm & Brandt, 2012).

From the start, the urban garden wanted to not only grow vegetables but also produce and share meals. The garden featured an elaborate outdoor kitchen equipped with four workstations, large grills and access to water, electricity, and bathroom facilities. Citizens in Køge could book the kitchen area for different gatherings from children’s birthday celebrations and outdoor dining to cooking school events.

The space holds 85 custom-made raised planting beds prepared by the Køge Bugt Projektcenter workers and assembled on-site with the help of residents. Locals can get their own planting bed if they sign a contract committing to the caretaking of their small lot. Other planting beds are managed by school classes and institutions or used for experimental projects by the Køge Food community (Køge Fødevarefællesskab). Seven common gardens are shared, and anyone can freely pick herbs and greens, an attempt to compensate for conflicts around access and claimed thefts (Wagner, 2016).

The urban garden Havnehaverne has relied on a consistent flow of resources from the start. The built structures and basic maintenance were funded by the developer Køge Kyst while Det Grønne Hus manage and support the distribution of planting beds, provide know-how and organise gardening and cooking workshops. The individually managed planting beds create a sense of ownership and continuity, as they require frequent visits from local gardeners.

Today, Havnehavene continues to serve as an activator at the former warehouse site in the transforming harbour, while the new city is being constructed around it. Eventually, the site will be absorbed by new city structures, but the plan is that Havnehaverne will relocate to a different space within the neighbourhood, which has so far been impossible. Meanwhile, a new urban gardening project, Køge Fælles Jord, has started in Køge around the experiences Det Grønne Hus, and thanks to the help of some of the citizens engaged in Havnehaverne (Figs. 5.7 and 5.8) (Køge Fælles Jord).

Fig. 5.7

Havnehaverne – the harbour gardens – black planter boxes distributed across the vacant building site in the transforming industrialised Køge harbour. The open kitchen and the seed storage building can be seen in the back. (Photo: Bettina Lamm)

Fig. 5.8

Havnehaverne – the harbour gardens. Individualised planter boxes. (Photo: Bettina Lamm)

3 The Four Urban Gardens: Discussion

Two of the gardens, Prags Have and Byhaven 2200, were created through citizen-driven bottom-up initiatives. The other two, Sundholmen Byhave and Havnehaverne, had public (municipal) or private organisations behind them. While the two citizen-driven urban gardens did not last and only were in existence for a limited number of years, the two urban gardens with public/private organisational support and management are still active. Two of the gardens, Prags Have and Havnehaverne, were conceived as temporary from the start - as they were located on vacant former industrial sites in urban redevelopment areas. Byhaven and Sundholm Byhave were both potentially permanent projects located on municipal land. All four gardens were or are openly accessible to everyone and theoretically open to everyone’s participation. The four Danish cases introduced in this chapter are illustrative of the possibilities but also challenges, connected with operating urban gardens in public space. Byhaven 2200 literally cultivated public space by creating an urban garden in an existing public park. Being on public land required that the citizens’ association managing the space made it publicly accessible and that they actively and strategically worked to allow everyone to participate in it – a task which was not without conflict given the diversity of needs, interests, and resources in the various user groups.

Prags Have, on the other hand, was open to the public even though it was built on private land. Prags Have turned a private plot into a public space by cultivating an urban garden and inviting everybody to participate in the project. Havnehaverne is publicly accessible and explicitly created by the developer to cultivate community and activate spaces yet to be developed carefully balancing private cultivation and public access.

While also open and accessible, Sundholmen Byhave distinguished itself for a special focus on the inclusion of vulnerable citizens. Here the core idea has been to connect people across social boundaries through the collective practice of gardening in shared, public space.

In both Prags Have and Byhaven 2200, the garden was a tool for community building at the local scale, a goal that became more important than the gardening itself. Both projects exemplify a do-it-yourself (DIY) urbanism of bottom-up initiatives dependent on the voluntary work of local enthusiasts who run and maintain the gardens. Despite being accessible to everyone, the spaces of Prags Have and Byhaven 2200 achieved the character of ‘commons’ rather than public spaces in the sense that they belonged to and were used by a somewhat stable community of gardeners.

As top-down initiatives by public or private organisations, Havnehaverne and Byhaven Sundholm could rely on sufficient resources to facilitate gardening and community building, yet even here a ‘gardening community’ emerged which identified with the place and each other, making this public space a commons. But whereas planting beds in Prags Have and Byhaven 2200 were shared, Sundby Byhave and Havnehavern in Køge’s growing plots were ‘owned’ and cared for by individuals or institutions.

Havnehaverne and Byhaven Sundholm did from the start have significant access to resources – something that was not available in Prags Have and Byhaven where all work – both social and gardening as well as fundraising – was carried out by volunteers.

Prags Have and Byhaven 2200 may have failed to improve urban ecologies and nature in the long term, but they did contribute to developing new relationships between people and other living things in the city. They also stimulated community building, supported DiY urbanism initiatives, and encouraged experiments with new ways of public life in public spaces and new ways of taking care of and maintaining public space. While these two urban gardens were temporary, they did support and stimulate a number of capabilities as defined by Nussbaum (2003) during their existence (see also Chap. 2). Beyond bodily health addressed in terms of food production, nutrition and physical activity (C2), the capabilities also included control over one’s environment (C10), cultivation of practical reason through opportunties for community engagement and bottom-up initiatives (C6) opportunities for engaging in tactile and creative expressions (C4), sustaining affiliation, inclusion and a sense of belonging (C7), cultivating emotional health (C5) opportunities for interaction with other species (C8).

Both Sundholmen and Havnehaverne took much of their inspiration from Prags Have and Byhaven 2200 as well as other activist-initiated projects. While the explicit aim in Byhaven Sundholmen was the inclusion of vulnerable groups and in Havnehaverne to stimulate community development, both projects used gardening as a tool to advance several human capabilities (Nussbaum, 2003) in a similar manner as Prags Have and Byhaven did. These include the development of physical health (C3), the stimulation of senses and imagination (C4), and the cultivation of relations with other people (C7) as well as other species (C8). The cultivation of capabilities through spatial practices of gardening and caring for a collective green space is perhaps more prominent in the established urban gardens than in the temporary ones, simply because of their longevity and the ability to engage professional staff to facilitate the nourishing of both garden and people. Yet, a top-down management limits some capabilities such as the opportunity to exercise practical reason (C6) and control over one’s environment (C10).

In conclusion, creating and cultivating an urban garden – especially when the goal is to establish community and keep public access – requires resources, continuity, and persistent work. The social aspects as well as the tending of plantings require attention and continuous care. One cold hope that in the future public agencies will recognise the widespread community benefits and opportunities for cultivation of capabilities that urban gardens can provide and increase funding and resources in support of community-oriented urban gardening places and practices in public space.