Daniela Matha, City Councilor Martin Wilhelm and Sabine Süssmann visiting the harbor garden together. (Photo: Stadtwerke Offenbach/Monika Müller) Hafengarten has existed for ten years
Good ideas are needed before the metamorphosis of an industrial wasteland into an inviting residential area with offices, shopping and leisure facilities as well as educational facilities can succeed. The imagination of potential investors must be fired so that they can see the possibilities of living and working with urban flair between old barracks, puddles and gravel.
The Hafengarten was Daniela Matha’s idea in 2013. As managing director of Mainviertel GmbH under the umbrella of Stadtwerke, she was entrusted with the development of the future residential area. “We wanted to implement the idea of urban gardening here as an interim use with the people from the north end. The first area for this was the site of today’s ‘Marina Gardens’ and was around 10,000 square meters in size. At that time, we commissioned a landscape architecture office to plan the site with paths, common areas and storage areas.”
Hafengarten today an oasis of well-being
Sabine Süssmann, head of the “Besser Leben in Offenbach” (BliO) project, was given the task of developing a temporary garden project together with interested parties. “It was a great project,” she says looking back. “Today the Hafengarten is an oasis of well-being. But when I saw the area for the first time, it was a cratered landscape with huge pools of water over which the blue crane’s rusty shovel squeaked back and forth in the wind.”
Not only the shovel was fastened, the surface was smoothed out, paths were created. Large concrete rings that were no longer needed elsewhere served as planters for the first trees. The children of the Goethe School planted the first flower pots for the area. Nothing was allowed to take root directly in the soil of the former industrial plant, a foil separated the new topsoil from the original soil.
“The official beginning of the temporary harbor garden was the opening of the harbor steps ten years ago,” says Sabine Süssmann. “Anyone who wanted to take part was given a red or yellow bakery box left over from a fair and a sack of earth. We also distributed vegetable seedlings.” This was how the first residents from the north end were lured to the area.
Gardening together is also an intercultural exchange
In the beginning, the boxes got lost on the huge site, but word of the free offer quickly got around. Baskets, milk cartons, rice sacks, yoghurt buckets, boots and children’s bathtubs were filled with soil and seeds and lovingly watered. Almost 100 parties sowed, raked, plucked and harvested here in heydays next to each other and more and more together. Some only cared about a box and came mainly for the fellowship. Seedlings were exchanged as well as tips and tricks, laypeople were trained by experienced gardeners. Before the sun and the seed, everyone was equal here. In addition to gardening together, an intercultural exchange also took place.
Families planted flowers and vegetables with their children, people with a migration background pulled herbs and vegetables from their homeland that they couldn’t find in the supermarket. “This is where I first saw bitter gourds planted by a family from Bangladesh, and I tried very tasty water spinach for the first time,” says Sabine Süssmann. The site was always open to visitors. Anyone who wanted to come was allowed to look and sniff.
City treasurer and head of department Martin Wilhelm also remembers the beginnings of the urban gardening project: “The Hafengarten quickly changed its appearance and showed how sustainable design of a district can be achieved through committed cooperation. While the construction work took time to develop Offenbach’s new district, the neighbors pitched in and quickly made the area between the north end and the harbor island colorful and worth living in the district, but also a successful example of citizen participation in a big city.
Great interest beyond the city limits
The free, green, democratic and unusual project attracted attention far beyond the city limits: “First, I was asked about the harbor garden all over the city,” recalls Sabine Süssmann, “and then more and more media inquiries came.” Editors interviewed and took pictures, radio stations sent people over and TV stations came with teams to shoot. In the midst of the ongoing construction work all around, the Hafengarten was a world of its own with creative and disorderly charm.
The fact that the harbor garden was only created for a limited period of time was increasingly pushed into the background by the gardening community and also by the general public. “There was no plan for how long the area should exist – that always depended on the progress of the construction work,” says Sabine Süssmann, who is actively supported by the project coordinator Alexandra Walker.
And when Marina Gardens was to be built and the community garden turned into a building plot again, nobody wanted to finally bury the unconventional idea of urban gardening. A new area was designated, again for temporary use. “In the winter of 2015/2016, the Hafengarten moved to its new location. With around 3000 square meters, it was only a third of the original area. But everyone moved together and everyone was able to pull along.”
Waiting list processed
A temporary waiting list, also with residents of the Hafeninsel, has now been cleared, but due to fluctuation, new places are becoming free every now and then. Anyone who takes part receives a contract and has to abide by a few rules. The facility stays open during the day, that’s part of the concept. Although flowers and vegetables are stolen from time to time, gardening is free. Many visitors, including many of the employees from the offices in the Hafenquartier, sit here on the benches and use the bookcase for a break in Offenbach’s most unusual green area.
How the green interim use will continue has not yet been decided: the Hafengarten is currently on the site of the future Gutschepark. That will only be planned in the next few years. Whether and in what form community gardening will continue here is not yet being discussed.
(Text: PM City of Offenbach)
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