In the garden, people experiment, experience success, and learn from their failures. They exchange ideas and experiences—whether about cultivation methods, recipes, personal topics, or questions about nature, sustainability, and the environment. Different types of gardens provide an ideal setting for this and enable diverse learning: not only through workshops in and about the garden, but also through conversations and practical experience.

The project aims to highlight these aspects. It will demonstrate how community gardens can make an important contribution to sustainability, biodiversity, climate protection, and social justice as spaces for transformative education.

In the course of the project, the various gardens that see themselves as educational spaces—whether community gardens, home gardens/allotments (or plots), house gardens, market gardens, etc.—will be networked. The project aims to help ensure that these gardens are perceived, accepted, and supported as valuable places by various actors, such as decision-makers. To this end, structures will be established. Two conferences, networking workshops in all federal states, and webinars will be organized. In addition, work will be done on digital networking on the topic of gardens and education. The project aims to lay the foundation for long-term Austria-wide networking and institutional anchoring of gardens as educational spaces.

The IFZ is responsible for the accompanying research in the project and is investigating how learning takes place in gardens (access, approaches, content, methods, didactics, etc.) and what is needed to strengthen gardens as places of education.