➔ Warsaw Allotment Gardeners

Warsaw Allotment Gardeners (polish: Warszawscy Działkowcy) is an ongoing project that evolves around allotment gardens, gardeners, storytelling, archives and participatory practices. The main aim is to make allotment gardens accessible to the wider community and to demonstrate the potential of allotments in the wider urban context as an important ecological resource in a climate crisis.

pic. Agnieszka Dragon, TOD im. Mai Berezowskiej, 2023

Warsaw Allotment Gardeners project started in 2015 as a process of getting to know the community of allotment holders in the ROD Obrońców Pokoju allotment garden in Warsaw's Mokotow district. It became a collaborative journey, opening the garden to the city and neighbours. Throughout 2015-2016 I was collecting stories of the gardeners and, along with a group of people, we documented gardens, allotment architecture, plants, metalworks. It has been a process of getting to know the garden community, the garden management and the internal relationships.

pic. Karolina Mełnicka, Grzegorz Hartfiel, ROD Obrońcow Pokoju 2015

Together with the garden management and the allotment holders, we started to organize open events such as garden walks, herb workshops, sound recordings or garden mapping. It became an opportunity for non-gardeners to come inside the garden, and for the gardeners to showcase their plots and the importance of their work.

Since then I have been documenting, recording and archiving Warsaw's allotment life. The project Warsaw Allotment Gardeners also marked the beginning of my participatory work in various allotment gardens in Poland.

Website of the project: https://warszawscydzialkowcy.pl/

pic. Agnieszka Dragon, TOD im. Mai Berezowskiej, 2023

pic. Agnieszka Dragon, ROD Koło II, 2021

pic. Misia Ludwig, ROD Obrońców Pokoju, 2015

In 2015-2016 the project was carried out as part of Laboratorium pomysłów, Towarzystwa Inicjatyw Twórczych "ę", in 2019 as part of a scholarship from Ministry of Culture in Poland.