Mărțișor (Urban) Community Orchard - a green and healthy oasis in my neighborhood
Mărțișor (Urban) Community Orchard is an initiative born from the need of Bucharest citizens living in center of the city, after the pandemic social distance and isolation, to reconnect and work in a positive and healthy space. The project stated in spring 2021 and finished its first stage in May 2022. The second scope was to regenerate an old orchard belonging to a very known Romanian poet named Tudor Arghezi using permaculture technics together with the local citizens living in the proximity.
Local
Romania
Bucharest, 4th District, Tineretului and Văcărești neighborhoods.
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-07-26
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): Asociația de Ajutor AMURTEL Romania Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Denise Last name of representative: Deshaies Gender: Female Nationality: United States If relevant, please select your other nationality: Romania Function: President Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Str. Almas no. 16, 1st District Town: Bucharest Postal code: 012835 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40 744 565 252 E-mail:office@amurtel.ro Website:https://amurtel.ro/en/
Name of the organisation(s): Tineretului Community Action Type of organisation: civic group First name of representative: Gabriela Last name of representative: Iordan Gender: Female Nationality: Romania Function: president Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Bulevardul Dimitrie Cantemir 20 Town: Bucuresti Postal code: 040245 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40 740 231 096 E-mail:gabriela.iordan@gmail.com Website:https://www.facebook.com/groups/initiativatineretului
The project was the basement for physically reconnecting the citizens of two main neighborhoods in Bucharest, in 4th district, after the pandemic isolation period in 2020. We found for collaboration a very warm cultural public partner that administrated the old house, the garden and orchard of Tudor Arghezi poet, that now is open to the public to be visited as a museum. As the space is very generous and needs a lot of maintained, the public partner Romanian Cultural National Museum, received very well the proposal that our Civic Citizen Group to organize different events and invite the proximity citizens to involve. We learned together what are the gentle and permaculture technics to regenerate old trees, to learn how to feed more naturally, to cut the food waste, to save food scraps and to compost together in order to regenerate soil and contribute to a more sustainable waste management in cities, to reconnect with urban nature, with their neighbors, from adults with children, elders, disability and vulnerable persons, teachers and their pupils. We connected at the final of the project also: public representatives and horticulture teachers and students.
After the hard social distance, that affected our mental health, the need for reconnection was so vital! The project came as a saving relief for our community and opened the appetite of each of the person involved for real appreciation of each of and the smallest green area still existing, in a very aggressive situation of accelerated urbanization and increasing pollution of air and soil, losing lots of green areas in favor of new buildings and concrete.
In the same time, lots of persons visited for the first time or revisited this special green and full of culture place.
This was the first stage of the project to launch the second stage, which came in summer 2022, named ,,School from the Orchard - working with Nature!,, to scale deep and scale up through a link with Buzău Romanian county in the rural area.
Reconnect with Nature in the urban area.
Reconnect directly different persons.
Gentle take care of trees and soil.
Reduce and repurpose our waste.
Transition to permaculture and edible cities.
Each aspect of the project took care of the main sustainable aspects - proximity, circularity, replicability. We were targeting with posters and flyers the persons that were living in the surroundings, as well as the private institution, schools and kindergartens. We considered that proximity is the best to cut the distances and though the pollution generated by traffic. Also the persons involved made a recurrent and healthy habit to come even weekly to the Community Orchard to the educational events, working experiences and to compost their food scraps. We create also an emotional bounding through an ,,adoption,, simbol practice between citizens and trees, for deepening the connection for Human to Nature, even in the middle of the city.
For the acquisitions we tried to minimize the packaging waste by choosing the suppliers in the geographically proximity and we always mentioning that we do not want any packaging when delivering the materials. We compost 1 square meter of food scraps and garden waste that was diverted from the municipal waste land and decrease the negative impact. The compost regenerated the soil in the orchard and in our blocks of flat poor gardens.
At the final of the project in May 2022 we organized an event for volunteers, representatives of partners and other public institution in order to present the results and the benefits of community gardens. This was the moment also to launch a digital guide for any civic group that may want to put into practice our experience and start a community garden anywhere in Romania (https://www.canva.com/design/DAFCAfxk--A/373MSgC76BjUEq2vM6PzuA/view?utm_content=DAFCAfxk--A&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton).
The main idea is that other public or maybe even private green space administrators to open their collaboration with citizens in order to invite them to involve and regenerate any other green space and public gardens by transforming into multifunctional and vivid spaces.
We worked from the beginning with a professional graphic designer and always present our project identity and visuals, before becoming public, to our partners. We integrated as well the cultural element that was very powerful in our project and we took care to express the work and philosophy of life of our national poet Tudor Arghezi. Romanian personality is known to value at its best in its work: life, nature, each for of life, spirituality and people. Tudor Arghezi was one of the first to establish its household in this area of Bucharest, called and known as ,,Mărțișor,,. Together with his family establishment, the whole area of the city was starting to develop in the past, so it was perceived by the poor people as an informal leader. Although we started the project as ,,Urban Community Orchard,, we officially renamed it at the final as ,,Mărțișor Community Orchard,, to strongly bound the civic initiative to the history, culture and geographical area, also the name of the street called also ,,Mărțișor,,.
In Romania, in spring we nationally celebrate with joy the beginning of spring, by offering and receiving flowers and small hand-made simbolic gifts called ,,Mărțișor,,. The logo itself includes three cultural and natural graphic symbols: a flower, a bee and a bow that is accompanying a ,,Mărțișor,, gift.
We made pictures at each educational and working activity and post them on our social media page in order to open the appetite for reconnection with nature at the the smallest micro level, as well as creating valuable and deep connections with the persons around us, through simple, beautiful and naturale experience. The main statement to all the events and posts was that nature units us because we are all interconnected and part of the nature. We opened awareness that each form of life is important to maintain the fragile life balance and we have the power to restore and regenerate the natural system around us by a more resilient and conscious way of living.
As we all face negative emotions during the pandemic, we design the Community Orchard as a project dedicated to the persons in proximity that are belonging to each level of education, financial status, health issues and ages. On the Mărțișor street and in the close area we meet a very wide and diverse human profile: from poor living in old and little cottages crowded with many children and elder persons, to wealthy and educated persons in the new villas and blocks of flat. We find here an old church, a public kindergarten, a public elementary and gimnazial school, a vet clinic, a NGO dealing with disabled persons (https://www.ateliere-protejate.org/) and more private schools or small business. We took care to announce from the start the representatives of this organizations and institutions via email, telephone and even meeting them face to face that we are happy to come to out public educational and working events in the community orchard. In March 2022, 350 children from public kindergarten and school were participating at the outdoor hour for environment education in the Orchard. We were enjoying together the ecologic Walking Bus to be visible and environment friendly despite the street where the car were not legally parked on the pedestrian side. Actually we were launching a petition, send a lots of email to the public house and police to take all the necessary actions to clean the pedestrian side of parked cars and give them more solutions in terms of redesigning the street (one way for cars, bicycle lane, etc.). By the end, we hit a succes by obtaining a marked on the pavement of a pedestrian-crossing in front of the museum ,,Memorial House of Tudor Arghezi,, where is located the ,,Mărțișor Community Orchard,,. All the events were for free and costs were covered from a civic community fund. All the educational and practical activities were designed and facilitated simple, pleasant and adapted for all beneficiaries: elders, pupils, adults and students.
The most positively impacted were about 30 recurent citizens (80 family members in total) that were committed personally to involve volunteering in the the practical activities of taking care of old fruit trees and to bring their vegetable waste scraps from their kitchen. They were stating to change their way of like, to reduce waste that is reaching the waste land and nature, by reusing, recycling and most of all, by composting. They become somehow dependent of our composting community station and were not conceiving anymore to lose such valuable materials, as vegetable scraps, to not be transformed so easily into natural fertilizator with the help of nature, meaning micro and macro organisms. They understood that we all have to work with nature to reestablish the fragile natural systems and the changes in our life can bring joy, physical and mind well being, health and creat financial savings. Unfortunately, Romania is only 11% recycling rate in 2021 (EUROSTAT data), the proximity infrastructure for collecting on separate types o materials is underdeveloped for recycling and missing at all for composting. That is way the community garden and compost low-tech stations can help the responsible persons to reduce their impact and give a positive exemple. We succeeded together to save almost 1000 kilograms of garden and kitchen vegetable waste in the first 8 months.
Teachers involved with their pupils, from local and public kinder-garden and school, understood that each proximity natural area, their garden, is a abundant source of learning experience for their children and that more changes can be done in their curricula without efforts and costs, to integrate the holistic and valuable experience learning in the outdoor spaces: explaining better the applicated science, encouraging the creativity to all levels, using natural materials, movement in fresh air and positively consuming the energy, raise the level of happiness and positive, rise empathy for all beings.
The most important partner in designing and implementation of the project was out public partner: National Romanian Museum of Literature, that is the administrator of ,,Memorial House of Tudor Arghezi,, museum, with whom we agreed all the activities and soft transformation of the space by bringing the infrastructure needed (compost station wooden boxes, upcycled raised beds for edible plants, event tent, project visual pan-cards, etc.).
We were financial and more than that supported by Bucharest Community Foundation which is an private umbrella fund giving to the community civic groups for their projects.
We were collaborating also with ALPAB which is the public institution that is taking care of green parks for managing and chopping the wood waste coming from regenerative cuttings on the fruit trees. We identified that their at the beginning to identify permaculture, sustainable (ecological and economical) ways of taking care the green areas and parks. These technics we are implementing with succes: mulching the soil with hay, leaves, chopped wood, local composting, encouraging spontan flowers not green lanes, which are not appropriate for our clima, area, needs public funds, needs chemicals to be maintained, kills biodiversity, degrade the soil, needs more water, etc.
At the final of the project, before one day of Tudor Arghezi birthday, we organize a public event and invite partners, volunteers, other public authorities involved in waste management and green space / parks management, and even our new university partner representatives from The Horticulture Faculty Bucharest, to recognize and promote the sustainable practices that we where using in the project. We strongly believe that Urban Community Gardens, that includes community compost station based on low and sustainable technologies, are a holistic solution for dealing with social - educational - health - food - climate crises, taking into account the accelerating urbanizing trends at all levels.
The most important field was the horticulture discipline which we ,,translate,, on every level of understanding. This is thanks of all by succeeding the partnership with the Horticulture Faculty in Bucharest that came with teacher and students to implement regenerative gentle cuttings and different other general and basic intervention for taking care of the Orchard and old fruit trees. We intermediate the passing of this practices to adults and children volunteers involved as citizens. Still we feel that we could also bring valuable information and experiences to our partner as we are focused on new permaculture model that brings novelty and innovation to the project and in general for each of the stakeholder involved that can include in their studies our positive case study.
The close and permanent interaction with the administrator of the green space and our partner, brought us a lot of challenges, in try keeping the balance between existing practices of taking care of the lawn and trees, which were mainly focused on the aesthetic aspects, and not of protecting the biodiversity. We understood that the work for changing habits for becoming again friendly with urban nature is a long term project. Using no more poison and chemicals, managing the natural capital with concern for biodiversity, pollinators, retaining the water and nutrients in the soil by mulching, and saving public money in the same time, should be a public concern for each of us in this general crisis at the global level. Key for this to happen in useful time are the financial support and international recognition in order that these kind of projects to continue. We were committed to find somehow support and even found it scaling deep the project at a higher level with an educational project called ,,School from the Orchard - we work with Nature!,, dedicated to 2 specific communities: one in Bucharest urban is Mărțișor community and one rural which is located in Poieni, Buzău county, S-E of Romania.
- 8000 euros private fund redirected for the regeneration of urban community and urban nature
- one project social media page over 1400 followers in 8 months
- a stable community of adults and children (around 30 persons) working and composting in the public Orchard
- the 2nd urban community compost station in Bucharest opened and free for Bucharest citizens to be used for free
- 1000 kilograms (one square meter) of vegetable waste from beneficiaries kitchens and from the orchard transformed locally into compost used locally to regenerate the soil for the production of healthy fruits and vegetables (circular economy)
- 350 of pupils attended at eco hour outdoor in the orchard learning about the benefit of compost, cut the waste, healthy food
- 2 main pubic partnerships with 2 important public institutions - National Romanian Museum of Literature and Horticulture Faculty in Bucharest
- over 15 events were opening this space as a community space, reconnecting between us, creating new friendships in the neighborhoods (over 200 persons in 8 months)
- 1 contest, 12 community applications, one mini-composting-station offered as prize and won by a kindergarten (a community including 150 kids and adults)
- over 10 online press articles offered public recognition and exposure
- 1 event for partners at the end of the project to present the conclusions, the benefits, the challenges and the results.
- 1 digital guide for other similar communities that indent to initiate a community garden and a community composting station for vegetable waste.
The hot spot and the heart of the project is the innovative urban low-tech community compost medium station. The concept is brought by one Romanian small enterprise from west european countries. The novelty of our project consisted in offering to the community the opportunity to practice their sustainable habits. In Bucharest and in Romania in general, the infrastructure and education for separate collection of waste to be recycled and composted is heavily undersized or even missing at all. Composting the food scraps from our households is something so rare in Bucharest and this is thanks to very few grass roots initiatives as community gardens and personal efforts to keep the scraps and transporting them to the rural area here some persons still has their parents living at a house with gardens.
Even if the Compost Law exists from 2020, the public and local authorities din not put into practice the measures, technical details and needed infrastructure for managing the vegetable waste to be composted. As far as we know Bucharest still dose not have a municipal compost platform for sustainable waste management. Bucharest citizens are not all encouraged or fined if they are not collecting separately, that is why Romania has a very low rate of recycling (11,3% in 2021 EUROSTAT). That is way the project attracted so generous press attention but also citizen recurent participations.
The other important innovative aspect was the fact that a green space and protected area were open its door for the community. The public partner that administrate the space has insuficient human resources to supervise and facilitate such experiences in the green space (especially the orchard) for the large public. Through our project, the partner give us as a civic group the responsibility to coordinate the outdoor events. The citizens were very enthusiastic that they could finally can enjoy such a green oasis in a more and more polluted city. Moreover, we all enjoy eating urban fruits!
After the call for fund proposals was launched in spring 2021 by Bucharest Community Foundation, part of the members of our leading small civic local group (Acțiunea Comunitară Tineretului) join on zoom to discuss what are the directions and what are the needs for our neighborhood. After several proposals, we decided that a community garden is the most desired. We stated to write the application form, the story of the project. In parallel we looked for a green area to propose a partnership with the owner or administrator of the land. We identified the museum that is having in administration the house, the garden and orchards of Tudor Arghezi poet, let to Romanian State to be opened and visited by Romanians as a museum. We write an message on the social media page of the museum and then an email describing the story of our project. As the primar answer was positive, we established in spring a meeting where we established the main aspects and steps. We came with the project covering the public partner need to receive help for taking care of the second orchard in the back of the museum. After the meeting we formulate a draft proposal for the written partnership agreement. The signing of the agreement was in august and we started the project in September 2021 with the first event. Initially the project had to last 8 months but we ask to the financial partner a prolonging period, so we finalized it in July 2022. We communicate with our partners to coordinate all the events and activities needed to implement the project - public partner, private financial foundation, university horticulture partner, suppliers, press, volunteers, other community representatives as schools. Our team was formed by a graphical designer volunteer, horticulture engineer, 3 members for the coordination of the project. We had a weekly or monthly meetings for deciding and moving forward. We had different groups on WhatsApp - volunteers, composters and one for our administrating team members.
From the start we established as an objective to build a digital guide for other citizens or civic local groups. The guide it includes the idea, the procedure, the steps and the concept for each of the activity, including the most important how to compost and the visual needed to mark the rules on the compost boxes and general posters fot the stations. We were opened to share our experience at each of the public event, press invitation to make articles, reports and even 1-to-1 chats with persons interested to start a similar initiative - a garden or /and a compost community station. When we offered the new compost station as a prize to the kinder-garden, we sustain them with all the information, being present in the assembly of the compost station and facilitating even a training event for their children, parents and teachers at the moment of launching the compost station to be used. We committed to continue to sustain the community even if the financial support and the project was officially ending in June 2022. The most valuable learning is that this kind of support is still needed to sustain the change of the public sector and embrace the innovation in the transition period to a more resilient, sustainable, inclusive, green cities. We are at the beginning of building healthy and trustful connections between all the stakeholders - civic citizens and groups, NGO, public institutions, schools and universities, private actors. The final scope is that this initiatives to normalize the model of collaboration and regular implementation and functioning of a public institution as a place that truly serves at the best quality the beneficiaries that are the citizens. All the green areas should be full of forms of life, natural, sustaining life of all levels and in each aspect, be useful and inviting the citizens to enjoy, to be present, reconnect with their neighbors, observe, make useful physicals activities, locally compost and plant flowers, trees and edible species.
We are facing the the most complex crisis at all levels: war, social, energetic, economic, educational, health, biodiversity, food and most of all climate / ecological crisis. The way the systems function in this moment, very centralized, very biurocratic is unsustainable and put first a lot of pressure, burden, unsecure and lack of resources to vulnerable persons with low education and with disabilities, but also children and elder.
The international and national institutions have the power to change the systems by empowering the local communities to regenerate their living spaces. The next years are crucial and essential that the innovations and the voice of the communities to be seen, recognized and heard. But most of all, what we change at the grassroot level, the positive change to be implemented and scaled up to all levels.
At the final of the project, even if was not planned initially, we organize an event for all our volunteers, partners, teachers and we invite also new representatives of the institutions that we consider that we could have good influence by visiting our Community Orchard, see our compost station, present them the results and the benefits of involving the citizens in reviving the green areas: cutting municipal costs with maintenance, reducing waste and chemicals used, qualitative education for all citizens (long life learning), increase the quality and regenerate soil (less mowing, mulching, keeping humidity, natural fertilization, house for biodiversity, wild and plant flowers for pollinators, perennial species), increase the interest of citizens for taking care of the green spaces by planting edible species and fruit trees, active and healthy lifestyle, healthy food, but most of all, as a common space to spent qualitative time together with the loved ones, friends, neighbors, children, companion animals. From a common garden a whole area can be transformed with the help of authorities and the constant involvement from the civic group.
