Plot 214: The Rules That Keep a Berlin Garden Cheap — Epoche B1
Berlin, 14 May Dear Clara, Big news: after two and a half years on the waiting list, we have a Kleingarten — an allotment garden. Plot 214, in a colony of ninety gardens between the S-Bahn line and the canal. An old apple tree, a crooked wooden hut, and neighbours who introduced themselves before we had found the water tap. Now the part that surprises everyone. The rent for a whole year is less than one dinner in a restaurant, and that is not the club being kind — it is a federal law, the Bundeskleingartengesetz, which protects allotment gardens and keeps their rent low. But the protection has conditions, and the club itself enforces them. The hut may not be bigger than twenty-four square metres, its roofed porch included. Nobody may live in it: an afternoon nap is fine, a home is not. And the plot must actually be gardened — the working rule is that about a third of it grows fruit and vegetables. A lawn with a deckchair and nothing else can cost you the lease. So in June the committee walks through every garden, kindly and with a clipboard. Our neighbour Herr Nowak, who is seventy-eight and grows more potatoes than he can eat, planted two rows of beans on our plot "so the walk finds something". We had been members for eleven days. That is the deal in one sentence: the garden stays cheap as long as it stays a garden. It comes with beans, advice, and a committee. Come in August — the apples are apparently the sour kind, good for cake. Best wishes, Sophia References Aristotle. (c. 350 BCE). Nicomachean Ethics. (Various editions and translations). Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books.