No land of your own: finding or founding a community garden – guide

Editorial team·updated on 15 Sep 2026

Deadlines, funding rates, responsible offices, projects and events in this guide come live from our records. They are not written into the text and are not maintained twice.

You want to garden but you have nothing: no plot, no courtyard, only a north-facing balcony. Berlin has more than two hundred community gardens for exactly this – and the quickest solution is almost always to join one rather than found one. But if there is none in your neighbourhood, founding is possible; it is just not a gardening project, it is an organising project.

Your starting point

You have no land, so you need someone who has, and a group to hold it with. Those two things together are the actual work; the gardening comes afterwards.

Four questions determine everything. Who are you? Three people, a house community, a neighbourhood association, a school? Who owns the land you have in mind – the Bezirk (district), the State of Berlin, a state-owned housing company, a parish, a private owner? For how long can it be available: permanently, or as an interim use until construction? And: is there water within reach? A garden without water is a summer project.

Is this realistic?

What is realistic first: join in. Almost all existing gardens are looking for people – for beds, for tool care, for outreach. In one season you learn what founding would cost you in two years, and you find out whether you really want it.

Also realistic: a small garden on clearly assigned land. The back courtyard of a housing company, a strip beside a nursery, a vacant plot as interim use, a church garden. The state-owned housing companies support tenants' gardens with land, planning help and a materials budget; that is the lowest-threshold route of all.

Difficult is a public green space. Gardening there goes beyond ordinary use and therefore needs permission – possible, but with lead time, conditions, and the question of who removes the consequences when the project ends. And unrealistic is a garden without a firm core: experience says that of twenty interested people, three water in July. Plan with the three.

So start here – with the gardens that already exist:

Step by step

1. Search first, found second Visit the gardens in your and neighbouring Bezirke, go to an open garden day, ask about free beds. Stopping point: if there is a garden with capacity within two kilometres, do not found a second one – join it.
2. Build a firm core You need three to five people committed for two years and a clear division of tasks: land and contracts, money and applications, garden practice, communication. Write down who does what – verbal promises last until the first conflict.
3. Look for land and establish ownership Ask the district office, the state-owned housing companies, parishes, and the Berlin property management company where state land is concerned. The state gardening information names a central contact point at the senate department for this. Stopping point: no bed is built before ownership is clear.
4. Check the soil Ask your district environment office for information from the Bodenbelastungskataster (register of contaminated soils). Berlin inner-city soils can carry lead, ash and legacy contamination. A practical recommendation, not an official requirement: where the history is unclear, build raised beds with clean substrate and leave the existing soil undisturbed.
5. Obtain the permit On a public green space, horticultural use requires permission under the Grünanlagengesetz (green spaces act); the district office is responsible, or the senate department for spaces of city-wide significance. Expect conditions, the question of restoring the site, possibly a security deposit, and a lead time of several weeks.
6. Sign a contract – and read it Use agreement, permission agreement or lease – the name matters less than the content. Watch the term, notice period, renewal option, liability, restoration obligation and who is responsible for trees on the site. Berlin environmental associations publish model contracts. Stopping point: a four-week notice period will not carry a project you put two thousand euros into.
7. Settle liability and insurance If the duty to keep the site safe is transferred to you, you need liability insurance – one of the main reasons garden groups form a registered association. If there are trees on the site, regular competent tree inspection belongs with it, and not in amateur hands.
8. Organise water Many Berlin projects work with a standpipe on a hydrant – that is not freely available but has to be registered with the Berliner Wasserbetriebe. A permanent connection only pays off over a long term. Abstracting groundwater requires a permit.
9. Start small and in public In the first year: ten to twenty raised beds, a tool box, a compost heap, somewhere to sit, and one fixed weekly date. Invite the neighbourhood before the fence goes up. A garden the neighbourhood knows suffers less damage and is more easily extended.

Time and cost

Time: from the first idea to a contract, experience says months rather than weeks – the search for land and the permit set the pace. Building it is then two or three weekends with many hands. Permanently, a garden costs one person five hours a week in season, plus the group.

Cost: an experience range, not a statistic. A first year with raised beds, substrate, tools, water registration, insurance and possibly forming an association realistically runs from a few hundred to several thousand euros, depending on size and how much you do yourselves. Ongoing costs are insurance, water, sometimes rent, and replacing tools.

How it gets financed: small annual membership fees, donations in kind from the neighbourhood, borrowed tools, project grants. Almost every funding pot requires a structure that can issue invoices and submit proof of use – the other argument for an association.

Upkeep: high and unevenly shared. The August watering rota is the litmus test of every group.

What are you allowed to do?

Public green spaces. The Grünanlagengesetz Berlin permits careful use within the purpose of the space. Gardening goes beyond that and therefore requires permission from the responsible authority; it may be granted in an individual case where an overriding public interest speaks for it and the removal of the consequences is secured. The act expressly allows conditions, a security deposit and charges. The district office is responsible; for spaces of city-wide significance, the senate department. Without permission the use is a regulatory offence.

Private and state-owned land. Here no act applies but a contract does. What matters is the term, notice period, liability and restoration. Use „at your own risk“ is provided for by law on public green spaces – on land handed over by contract, liability is a matter for negotiation and belongs in writing.

Legal form. An association is not compulsory. An informal group can garden, and cooperating with an existing body – an association, a parish, a school, a neighbourhood centre – often replaces founding your own. A registered association brings three things: the ability to contract, insurability, and access to grants and donations.

And what you may not do: prune trees or alter their root zone without regard to the Baumschutzverordnung, abstract groundwater without a permit, or plant vegetables in the existing soil of a suspected contaminated site.

Matching funding

A community garden is not a building measure, so the building and courtyard programmes do not apply. What does fit are project grants: the Stiftung Naturschutz Berlin funds nature conservation and environmental education projects, and expressly not only associations but also natural persons and partnerships – the deadlines and the state of the application portal change over the year, which is why both are in the dataset and not in this text. Added to that are district small-project funds, neighbourhood funds, and support from the state-owned housing companies, which contribute land, planning and materials for tenants' gardens.

Advice is the underrated item: as a pilot district, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg has its own coordination office for community gardening that answers questions about land and rules, and Berlin environmental associations publish guides and model contracts.

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