You reap what you sow – in Kamp-Lintfort’s Zechenpark, for example, this means strawberries and spinach in June, which sprout from the raised beds alongside marigolds and borage. Thanks to two sowing and planting initiatives in April and May, the collaborative urban gardening project run by the Landesgartenschau Kamp-Lintfort Friends’ Association, SCI:Moers gGmbH and the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences is showing its first signs of success.
As well as social interaction, the project also focuses on research: Dr Daniela Lud, Professor of Environmental Assessment and Remediation, is currently supervising two Bachelor’s theses on the ‘Environment & Energy’ degree programme that deal with urban biodiversity: “Through this project, and in collaboration with the Friends of the State Garden Show and the town of Kamp-Lintfort, our students are able to develop exciting research questions. These include, for example, how to encourage local residents to get involved and what role urban gardening spaces can play in achieving local sustainability goals. The urban gardening project builds on the tradition of gardening, which has long been part of the historic settlement in Kamp-Lintfort, and brings it into the public space at the Zechenpark. This research collaboration is particularly exciting because it brings together many local stakeholders and offers us, as a university, the opportunity to give students a hands-on understanding of structural change and the opportunities it presents for urban development on the former colliery site. In this way, we can work with students to help shape the future of the Zechenpark in Kamp-Lintfort.”
Anyone interested in finding out more about the collaboration or who would like to get involved in the gardening project can contact Prof. Dr Lud by email at daniela.lud@hochschule-rhein-waal.de or Bastian Gehrmann at bastian-dominic.gehrmann@hsrw.org.
