Have you been around nature today? What does this mean in a city like Hamburg? Can there be nature on the stairs? At the bus stop? We ask ourselves and our students: What is the overall social and ecological significance of nature in cities? Is nature the same for everyone in the city? Who has access to which nature? Who is able (and allowed) to use it? And how? And why and how should we do urban gardening on campus together?
Reflecting on the concept of nature like this helps us to derive the current relationship to nature in its social complexity and to think about future ways of dealing with nature in terms of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). It becomes clear that a clear definition of an ahistorical and non-societal nature is not possible. That humans always have been and will be part of it. For this reason, in our seminars on urban gardening we also look at the cultural and social history of concepts of nature. By drawing on feminist, epistemological, scientific, aesthetic, socio-political and economic perspectives on urban nature in general and urban gardening in particular, the complexity of the concept of nature will become clear. But we don`t stop there. Every semester our students develop their own ideas about how to do urban gardening on campus. But they do not stop there, the final task of each seminar is to get into action and realize one of the ideas as a team. In the last semesters our students have built a seedbomb vending machine, made wooden signs to name all the plants in our Wurzelwerkgarden, developed new solutions for watering our vegetables, build places for bees and other insects, planted wild perennials as well as strawberries and other tasty local fruits and many more.
But still, we don’t stop here. On a structural level, we aim to expand, further develop and consolidate our joint biology education courses on urban gardening in cooperation with the ASTA of the University of Hamburg, the Green Office of the University of Hamburg, the Sustainability Office and the Biodiversity Lab of the University. Like a rhizome we will grow all over campus of the University of Hamburg and beyond into the city. To do so, our aim is to offer two courses for urban gardening every semester and ensure continuous support for our existing urban gardening area called “Wurzelwerk” (engl. root system) as well as growing our rhizome all over campus constantly.
This continuity should contribute to the Wurzelwerk becoming a participatory place that both contributes to the preservation of biodiversity in the city and is a place of encounter that becomes a space for social and political negotiation processes with regard to a future worth living together. Because ESD is not only about biodiversity it`s about us. Therefore, in addition to the subject-specific qualification objectives, the seminars pursue the substantive goal of introducing students to extracurricular activities at the university and thus making the social and political elements of ESD tangible. The central idea is, that the seminar acts as a door opener for student engagement in the context of ESD. The aim is to sensitize students to the importance of social commitment and to support them in making an active contribution to shaping ecological and social coexistence. The opening of the seminars for students from nearly every program of the university, supports students in looking beyond their own horizons (and degree program) and understanding ESD as a task for society as a whole. In addition, the seminar offers concrete assistance for students to become actively involved in shaping the university and to think about self-managed spaces together with the goals of ESD and finally to transfer them to new context in terms of their individual degree program (e. g. developing future natural schoolyards for pre-service teachers).
But we can't do it alone. So, this is an invitation to all members of the University of Hamburg, no matter if you are a researcher, a research assistant for teaching, administrative staff, a student or if you just live next door or like to spent time on campus: Come and join us to create a sustainable city worth living in for us all. There are still dry-stone walls to build, many conversations to be had, conflicts to solve, bees to count, stories and visions to create, weeds to pull, and tomatoes to eat.
Britta Lübke and Dörthe Ohlhoff work and research in the area of Biology Education within the Faculty of Education at the University of Hamburg and lead the “Urban Gardening” project.