Local Matters this week is about urban farming. The Ministry for environment actually has a national urban farming strategy. This strategy was presented in 2019, it aims to promote urban farming initiatives to make cities more environment friendly, to produce vegetables in non-used urban areas and to create social links and foster getting together through community gardens. This week, we’ll have a look at that strategy and mainly, how projects have evolved since the presentation 2019. For today’s start of the week, I spent Saturday morning in the community garden “Breedewee” in Esch-sur-Alzette.
A five minutes walk from the city centre, right between park and residential area, a few Esch residents cultivate vegetables. Right now, the garden is not much to see. The lack of rain has damaged most of the plants. Many decided to give up the fight against the drought and became part of a new life cycle which starts on the compost.
Marjorie Lefort is responsible for the garden. She works as a volunteer for the environment association Transition Minett. She says: “We cultivate carots, potatoes, tomatoes. We have rhubarb, beans, peas. We try to cultivate the vegetables of northern Europe.”
Once a week, every Saturday, between five and ten people meet to take care of the community garden. They seed, and plant, harvest and take care of the plants. “This garden is provided by the city of Esch. It is free and open for everybody. We only use organic vegetables, no chemical products. It is meant for the people from Esch, but also others can attend it.” The Breedewee garden is an ecological garden. That’s why many plants have not survived the drought. Usually, the gardeners would collect the rain water for pouring the plants. But this year, there is no rain. Nevertheless, the garden fulfills its purpose. “The purpose of the garden is to give the peopled of Esch the possibility to cultivate own vegetables. It is also a meeting point. What I like about the garden, is that you can meet people different from your usual daily life”, Marjorie Lefort says.
At the Breewee garden in Esch, everybody is welcome to participate. In the city of Luxembourg, there are five similar community gardens for residents in Bonnevoie and Limpertsberg, in the Grund and in Pfaffenthal. Most of them regularly plan educational events on eco-gardening. If you want to want to give a hand in the garden, just check out the community gardens.