Here is an article from 10/17/2010 to include us in the FAZ.online. Here are excerpts from it:
[...]
The battle with the bureaucracy - that's almost all neighborhood initiatives together. Not always recognize the need for local authorities or the quality of communal gardens. On Marianne Platz in Berlin-Kreuzberg about: that there today, the association "Ton Steine Gardens" uses a piece of a public park so that residents on small beds of beans, lettuce, herbs and sunflower Who grow this were tough negotiations with the administration needed. "We have had quite a long breath to achieve that," Malte Zacharias tells of the support group.
The users are a "good mix Kreuzberg"
It began with a citizen participation process to the Bethany area around a former hospital that is now used as a cultural center, recast. Residents then met at a "neighborhood sofa" to gather ideas - there was also the idea of common gardening. The city stood across the plans for the redesign was long since finished, But a small group did not let up and founded a club to give their interests a legal form. Finally said to the district mayor thousand square meters, last August signed the contract. ". But we have so much supply that are now already more than 40 people on the waiting list
The users are a" good Kreuzberg mix, "says Zacharias: true Berliners, people from immigrant backgrounds, young families, from new arrivals around the world. Since it is engaged in discussions on weekdays or during cooking together. Especially on the common interest, the plants, growing techniques, the Gardeners.
cities can learn from people from the countryside come
in Berlin has now formed a dense network, the gardeners are well organized, everyone knows each other. Of course there are many different approaches: some it is about the political statement, to reclaim public space, while others simply want to just dig in the earth, or harvest your own tomatoes. Cities can learn from people who come from the country boy of old, German immigrants. All too often it produces only live side by side, instead of each other, find teacher Andrea, the Turkish from their neighbors has learned how to umgräbt earth properly. But most important is the garden for the elderly, by Andrea: "They are there every day. The boys meet in the kindergarten, but where is where the old man? "There has Gerda Munnich a good idea," I will be old, but with a green lawn in front of the door " 
