Prinzessinnengarten (Princesses Garden) is an urban garden right at the Moritzplatz roundabout in Kreuzberg. It was started in 2009 by the non-profit Nomadisch Grün (Nomadic Green). The idea behind Nomadisch Grün is to create mobile gardens!
The 6000 square meters are rented from the city of Berlin and maintained by friends, neighbors and other interested people. Anyone can shop here (including “harvest your own”), anyone can hang out, anyone can help – through work or through “adopting a garden bed”. There are vegetables and flowers and bees and events and an all-around pleasant and unique atmosphere.
Something that struck me especially about this garden was the fact that all the plants are grown in different containers instead of the ground: a method that could be adopted in any area where the soil may be hostile (like in our Brooklyn garden, which seems to hide all kinds of things I’d rather not know about). Of course, this also makes the garden mobile. Fascinating!
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| Young Vegetables Mural at Prinzessinnengarten — |
Documentary filmmaker and opera set designer Susanna Boehm had suggested this garden as a subject for my In A Berlin Minute series last fall – but I actually never made it inside until visual and concept artist Sonya Schöberger suggested we’d meet there the same evening I filmed “Oranienstrasse” – In A Berlin Minute (Week 59). As a matter of fact, the extended version (Bus M 29) of that video even shows glimpses of Prinzessinnengarten.
I had no idea there was such a lovely cafe in the middle of this urban garden and I promptly returned with Scott and my dad, Günter Westphal, who was visiting that weekend and who is big into urban gardening and alternative urban development from below (“Stadtgestaltung von unten”). That’s when I shot this video and that’s why those two most important men in my life show up in the end of the video drinking my new favorite Lemonaid (from Hamburg).
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| Prinzessinnengarten Flower Princess — |
oooh, i really love this one!
thanks for a lovely summery film, luci . . .