DOTE Garden is a physical space in the city of Palermo, conceived and cared for by the collective Aterraterra. It is born out of Listening to Seeds, the third moment in our Year of Listening. You can visit the garden by reading the stories of the seeds that have been planted in it. This is one of the stories.
My mother’s family used to be very poor farmers in the black forest in Germany. My parents, with four children, had a garden where we produced a lot of food, because it was cheaper and we did not have enough money.
My sister is convinced that my parents had several children just to have enough laborers in the garden, I also always had an ambivalent relationship with gardens, because I had to work a lot as a child. So I do not have this romantic idea of a garden.
I always lived in big cities, and just before covid, I thought why don’t I have a garden, and the day before the Covid lock-down, I signed a contract for a garden in the outskirts of Berlin. It is a community system and you need to grow stuff. So I have these traditional German neighbors that are telling me which shrubs to take out, another neighbor is a chemist, who produces medicines from the plants.
I leave a big part of my garden for wild plants which I eat together with my son with whom I’ve made the deal that if he’d eat all the things that grow in the garden he is allowed to have a Shawarma when back in the city.
Every time we arrive to the garden, I walk around and go through the things that are growing, collect and make into a salad. There are lots of spicy things that grow in my garden, very good for digestion. Many people have problems with digestion, because the commercial producers have taken out the bitter and spicy characteristics from the vegetables and these plants one can’t find in the shops.
It is a very interesting community in this garden. It was founded in the last days of the GDR, by privileged people, so it is well equipped, like tv cable, electricity, running water.. we have real houses, it is all hand made etc.. and there are lots of Russians. (From all over Russia, so they are not all friends with each other).
And today I have brought a garlic head with me. One of my Russian garden neighbors, has his garlic sent to him from there, and he comes from a region on the borders with china. It is a special type of garlic it grows only four or five gloves, it is very small and very spicy. My neighbor gives me one per year, they are very precious to me too, so bringing one here is quite something. I have to decide which ones do I eat and which ones do I grow. I love eating fresh garlic. It is very good for blood pressure and for relaxation… I use it when I am stressed.
For me the whole garlic history is very interesting. Wherever you go now, you can only find Chinese garlic for example although it is very easy to grow, I don’t know why locals don’t preserve their varieties by growing them. And speaking of locals and varieties, growing up in Germany, I witness the discrimination towards people coming from other parts of the world, like Yugoslavia, The Arab world etc.. due to the smell of garlic which they use so much in their daily dishes. Germans are against using garlic in a way that it could leave a smell on the breath or clothes or in the house, and by that they stigmatize and marginalize others who do.
The other thing I have brought is calendula. It grows in different colors, and on any ground. My father used to make cream with that. I love plants for observing, but what I love more is to do things with them. It is a medical and edible plant, and it looks beautiful. From Calendula you can make tea, cream, and eat its flowers. These seeds are of yellow and orange Calendula.
Click here to read/see the different stories…
Photo by: Lina Issa
