An apartment block with a back courtyard: greening it together – 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.

Your courtyard in Berlin is paved, with four bins, two bike racks and a corner nobody ever stands in. Twelve flats look onto it. In August the air stands still. You want to change that – and the best thing about a courtyard is that it only pays off together, which is precisely why Berlin's only greening grant for which tenants themselves can apply exists for courtyards.

Your starting point

The courtyard belongs to someone, but you use it. As tenants you cannot rebuild it, but you can put it to use – and you can act together, which in practice achieves more than a single enquiry. Anything touching the fabric – lifting paving, fixed raised beds, planting a tree – needs the consent of the owner or managing agent. Loose planters and pots on the paved surface generally do not, but the house rules apply. In an owners' association, redesigning the courtyard is a structural alteration under the Wohnungseigentumsgesetz: a resolution is needed, and cost sharing follows the majority.

Four facts carry the whole plan: how much area is sealed and how much open? How much light arrives – Berlin back courtyards are often three hours of sun and twenty-one of shade? Where is water, meaning is there an outside tap? And who is in, not today, but in the third summer?

Is this realistic?

What is realistic is almost always a phased plan. On the paved surface, large planters and mobile raised beds work, as do trellises on firewalls, a bench and nest boxes – all without touching the fabric and without a permit. The second step is desealing: lift paving in a margin, build up soil, plant perennials and shrubs, perhaps a small-crowned tree. The third is water: direct roof runoff into the courtyard instead of the sewer.

What is not realistic is lawn. A Berlin back-courtyard lawn is a dust patch after two years. Shade perennials, ferns, woody plants and climbers carry a courtyard; grass does not. Equally unrealistic: vegetables straight into the existing courtyard soil while the site's history is unclear – inner-city soils can carry lead, ash and waste oil. For food crops use raised beds with clean substrate.

Professional planning is advisable, not mandatory – except where trees, services or an underground garage deck are involved. How other Berlin courtyards solved it:

Step by step

1. The neighbours first, the office second Put a note in the stairwell and invite people to meet in the courtyard. You need three to five people who stay involved and one who writes things down. Stopping point: whoever starts alone builds a courtyard they will water alone.
2. Get the free greening advice Some Bezirke (districts) have their own courtyard or greening advice service that visits you, makes proposals and helps with the application – in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf it is the way into the grant. City-wide and free of charge, there is also an open advice session on urban greening.
3. Get consent in writing Ask the owner or managing agent for written consent – for the district programmes it is an application requirement anyway. Write down what will be planted, who maintains it, who is liable, and that nothing has to be removed when individual tenants move out. In Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf owners must additionally confirm in writing that they will not raise the rent because of the greening.
4. Check subsoil and contamination Before any paving comes up: where are the services, where is there a cellar, where does water stand? And ask your district environment office for information from the Bodenbelastungskataster (register of contaminated soils). Stopping point: where contamination is suspected, nothing is dug and nothing infiltrated until that is settled.
5. Protect the trees If there is already a tree in the courtyard, it is protected under the Baumschutzverordnung from eighty centimetres of trunk circumference – and so is its root zone: the crown spread plus 1.50 metres. Excavation and compaction are prohibited there. Stopping point: desealing around a tree is good for it but has to be agreed with your district's environment and nature conservation office.
6. Start small, start visibly Begin with what shows in the first year: three large planters, a trellis on the firewall, a bench. Visible success brings the hesitant along – a site fence and a heap of soil do the opposite.
7. Deseal and plant Lift the paving, loosen the compacted base, build up soil. Native shade-tolerant species, wild perennials instead of bedding plants, nest boxes alongside. The district programmes rely on your own labour and on native species – that is not a saving, it is what works in a courtyard.
8. Organise water and upkeep A watering rota for the first and second summer, a rain barrel under the downpipe, a tool box in a fixed place. And one date a year when everyone joins in for two hours – that keeps a courtyard green longer than any planting concept.

Time and cost

Time: from the first round in the stairwell to planting, several weeks to months are realistic – the owner's consent and the processing of the application set the pace, not the gardening. The desealing itself is one or two weekends with many hands.

Cost: editorial ranges, not quotations. A good planter-and-raised-bed solution with a trellis and a bench costs a few hundred to around a thousand euros. Desealing with soil build-up, perennials, shrubs and a tree lands in four figures depending on area and how much you do yourselves; the district courtyard programmes cap their grants at three and five thousand euros respectively, which mirrors the typical project size well. Disposing of the paving is the item everybody forgets.

Upkeep: watering in the first and second year, moderate effort after that: cutting back and tidying twice a year, leaving the leaves rather than removing them. Reckon on one person who takes care of it and three who help when reminded.

What are you allowed to do?

Consent. Nothing touching the fabric happens without the owner's agreement – and for the district programmes it is an application requirement. In an owners' association a resolution under the Wohnungseigentumsgesetz is needed; how the costs are shared depends on the majority by which it passes.

Tenants' rights and their limits. Loose planters on a paved surface are contractual use, as long as the house rules say nothing else and nobody is obstructed. Structural changes may carry an obligation to restore the original state – which is why that belongs in the written consent, or the consent says there is none. Plants you brought in yourself you may usually take with you; with a house community, you do not.

Soil and water. For desealing, infiltration and excavation, your district's environment and nature conservation office is the responsible body; it also keeps the register of contaminated soils. Trees in the courtyard fall under the Baumschutzverordnung.

And what applies regardless: fire service access, escape routes and bin locations stay clear – that is not a matter of interpretation. For monuments, the permit requirement for changes to the appearance applies in the courtyard too.

Matching funding

This is the exception in Berlin's funding system. Almost all greening programmes presuppose ownership. The district courtyard programmes in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf expressly do not: tenants, house communities and other entitled users can apply – in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf owners without tenant involvement are in fact expressly not eligible. Funded are desealing, native perennials and shrubs, and nest boxes; required are mainly your own labour, the owner's written consent and keeping the greening for ten years. Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf limits the area to private property inside the S-Bahn ring.

For the other Bezirke we know of no comparable grant – a gap we name rather than paper over with a general answer. The Berliner Entsiegelungsprogramm and BENE 2 address public, non-profit and commercial bodies, not private individuals. What counts for you permanently: desealed, infiltrating surfaces can reduce the rainwater charge levied by the Berliner Wasserbetriebe.

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