Publications

The magazine Koloniträdgården (The Allotment Garden) is sent to all members of the federation five times a year. It is one of the most respected gardening magazines in Sweden, but it also deals with environmental issues and all kinds of organizational matters of interest for the members. Non-members can subscribe.

Stadens Odlare (City Cultivators)

SUMMARIES
Translated by Ewa Johansson/ Idiom Translations

- The Allotment Movement in Stockholm – Conditions and Development in the Early 20th Century (Catharina Nolin)
- Cultivators on the Hill – the Story of South Tantolunden (Maria Moberg)
- Borderland. The Allotment Movement as Concept and Practice. (Magnus Bergquist)
- A Movement with a Hundred Year Long History and a Prosperous Future (Leif Thorin)
- With Swedish Eyes. A Multicultural Garden Territory 1990 and 2000 (Karin Becker and Barbro Klein)
- Letter from the Allotment (Lars Ulvenstam)
- The Skansen Allotment Area (Mats Janson)

Catharina Nolin
The Allotment Movement in Stockholm – Conditions and Development in the Early 20th Century

Allotments have a century-long history and their establishment should be seen in the light of the revolutionary development in Stockholm in the late 19th century. The sparsely populated islands transformed into densely populated residential quarters with newly laid-out parks for recreation, outdoor activities, games and sports.
A person that played an important role in the urban development at the turn of the last century and to the allotment movement was Anna Lindhagen. She adopted socialism at an early stage, her ambitions decidedly educational. She also took the initiative in creating the first allotments in Stockholm, the Värtan Allotment Area, established in 1904. Her books and articles on allotments reveal a passion for nature and local folklore characteristic of the times. An allotment with a gazebo could offer the less fortunate appropriate activities in a healthy environment, and in addition a welcome contribution to the household such as fruit, berries and vegetables. An allotment could also provide enjoyment and a spirit of community.
Anna Lindhagen was part of a group that included Anna Åbergsson, Karl Warburg and G H von Koch and who shared a similar commitment. The Stockholm Allotment Society was formed on their initiative in January 1906 in connection with the City Council sanctioning a motion to grant land to allotments. Various interest groups and trades were represented in the society, including gardeners and architects. The first few years the society managed four areas: Eriksdalslunden, Barnängen, Fredhäll and Söderbrunn. The allotments soon became very popular and in the 1910s the society began looking for land outside the city, including in Alvik, Stora Mossen and Dalen. The shortage of supplies during the First World War resulted in many new allotment areas.
To form a common policy within the areas, gazebos were to be modelled on specific drawings available through the society. Several architects were contacted to make type drawings, initially including Lars Israel Wahlman and Ragnar Östberg. The gazebos varied in size, from just over five to fourteen square metres. They should preferably be built of planed wood and painted red, white, yellow, dark green or tarred. An overall plan for each specific allotment area was usually established.
The price for an allotment depended on size and water supply. Short-term leases proved problematic. Despite regulated leases and regulations on life in the allotments there was room for individuality. Gazebos, ornaments and cultivation varied. Among the most common crops were root crop, vegetables, fruit and berries, but flowers were also grown.
In 1921 the Stockholm Allotment Society passed everything on to the City of Stockholm, after which the allotment areas were managed as coops or directly by the city. The allotment movement entered a new phase in the early 1920s. The city expanding, several areas risked being demolished. Only a few of the earliest areas remain, but new areas have been established throughout the 20th century. Today there are some 10,000 allotments in 150 different allotment areas in Stockholm. Their significance to the urban environment cannot be overestimated.

Maria Moberg
Cultivators on the Hill – the Story of South Tantolunden

South Tantolunden Allotment Society is one of nine in central Stockholm. It is situated on Södermalm, a quickly expanding part of the city in the early 20th century. West Södermalm housed a large number of factories, including Tanto Sugar Works. Södermalm was primarily populated by workers. Despite the many new homes built at this time, there was a great shortage of housing. Tanto Sugar Works provided housing for its employees. The workers did not enjoy paid vacation and could not afford to rent a summer cottage but Tantolunden became a popular place with people on the island. In 1915, the City of Stockholm provided land on the south side of Tanto for growing potatoes. The first few years a city clerk, Mr Lindh, managed the lease. After experiencing some trouble, and on the clerk’s advice, the cultivators formed a society that rented the entire area, in turn leasing plots to its members. In 1917 the South Tanto Allotment Society agreed on the regulations. The lease from the city was signed in 1918 and the first list of members included 108 people, all but one a resident of the two districts Maria and Högalid.
The South Tantolunden Allotment Society has faced threats of demolition on several occasions: in 1930 in connection with the construction of Södersjukhuset Hospital and in the early 1960s the cottages were considered old and shabby. A public meeting in 1966 resulted in a renovation of the area along with new fences, water supply, etc. In the mid-1970s the number of plots increased and today the society has 110 members. Advocates for the allotment area over the years include Anna Åbergsson, Curt Jeppson and Percy Ahnhem.
The first lease from 1918 describes the cottages as ‘gazebos’. There were rules regulating the size and exterior of the cottages and type drawings with specific instructions. Most were probably built by the colonists themselves. The cottages were simple and uninsulated, sometimes with a small stove, and people were allowed to stay there from 1 April to 1 October. Building regulations changing in 1969, the cottages are now considerably bigger and of individual designs. In the 1970s the area received electricity and telephone lines although some colonists considered modernisation inconsistent with the image of life in the allotment. Anyone interested in buying a cottage in South Tantolunden is placed on a list, today containing over 350 people.
The City of Stockholm gave advice and instructions as to how to cultivate allotment plots. The most common crops in the beginning were potatoes and Swedish turnips, and later there was a rich supply of vegetables, fruit, berries and flowers. The society board demanded a great deal of the management of the plots the first thirty years. Colonists took part in exhibitions and shows. Terraces, walls and well-managed composts, cultivators working the thin earth-layer on the hill of Tanto need to be imaginative. The slope of the hill has resulted in specific problems with water supply and the maintenance of roads and pathways.
Joint parties have been part of everyday life in the allotments since the beginning and today there are a number of organised events in connection with the seasons, and neighbours see a great deal of each other. Through the colonists’ work, the area has become a popular place among Stockholmers and tourists.

Magnus Bergquist
Borderland. The Allotment Movement as Concept and Practice.

Nature is indeed ‘cultural’, i.e. marked by man. The organised form of nature that a garden is made up of has been held up as one of the central archetypes of civilisation. The garden is the fundamental building stone in an allotment area, which also includes buildings, individual people and groups of people. The allotment can be considered a kind of model of society, and has also been regarded a model for society. What characterises an allotment is the small, compact, intensely cultivated land, the combination of cottage and garden, the relationship between the part and the whole.
The allotment garden is an international phenomenon arising all over Europe around 1900. An important factor in this development is that the allotment is a product of industrialisation, urbanisation and cultural modernisation. Nevertheless, the allotment movement is thought to originate from Germany in the 1820s, on the initiative of Daniel Gottlieb Schreber in Leipzig, designing gardens to enable families to enjoy the outdoors. Denmark saw allotments associated with various political ideologies. Both the left and the right wing tried to gather votes by promising people allotments. The first Swedish allotments were established in Skåne around 1895.
Anna Lindhagen, whose ideas inspired many allotment societies around the country, was one of the national forerunners. Teacher E. P. Essén in Gothenburg found actual examples on his travels around Skåne and Denmark. A liberal and socially interested middle class took the first initiative in establishing allotments. In Gothenburg, however, joiner (journeyman) Herman Lindholm ensured a stronger link between the allotment movement and the working-class movement than in many other cities.
The allotment movement was seen as both liberating and as building character. People were given the opportunity to create something of their own, at the same time becoming integrated in society. Allotments were organised as small societies; the colonist had to abide by certain rules but also received rights independent of his or her social standing. Gardening involved a modern and rational approach and cultivation ideals were connected with ideas on how man should be; cultivated plants brought cultivated people.
However, ideals and visions are not equal to practical life; similarities and differences between colonists became clear through everyday events. In the Gothenburg Allotment Society, the growing of potatoes became a matter of principle, to many colonists a matter of freedom. Colonists saw it as a way to increase the household’s economy but the board considered potatoes a coarse and unrefined crop.
After the World Wars, allotments began to be considered as recreational activities and, paradoxically, in the 1960s the allotment movement was introduced as a counter movement to the urban modernism that had once given birth to the idea of allotments. A new generation of colonists appreciated the proximity, the soil and being able to work with their hands, which, however, also brought a rise in prices and a desire to improve the standard of the cottages. In turn, this resulted in a desire to return to the original idea and develop work within societies.
The allotment movement has both reflected and influenced social change at large, but has always been regarded as somewhat problematic, which can be explained by allotments’ status as borderland phenomena. To some extent, allotments are on the borderland between town and country, nature and culture, modernity and tradition, people and society.

Leif Thorin
A Movement with a Hundred Year Long History and a Prosperous Future

Many of the living conditions forming the development of the Swedish allotment movement have changed. Today no one need grow their own produce in order to get food, travelling is not open solely to the rich, there are many hobbies to choose from and people look for individual satisfaction. How, then, have the ideas of the allotment movement over the past one hundred years been transferred into the 21st century? Do we need them and can the movement play a role in the development of society?
Allotments have at times been considered an obstruction to the development of society and social planners have not always seen the positive effect that allotments have had on the urban environment. Supported by the authorities, allotment areas have been reappraised since the 1970s. Influential leaders have allowed the allotment movement to safeguard its interests. In the 1970s the National Planning Authorities collaborated with the Allotment in publishing guidelines for the planning of new areas, strengthening contacts between allotment societies and local authorities. The allotment areas served as models for the holiday villages near the cities planned in the 1980s. The holiday villages were linked with the organisation of the Allotment Federation but the development did not live up to the expectations.
A large number of plots were laid out near suburbs created during the peak years. A diversity of languages, cultural patterns and cultivation traditions was able to come together, in accordance with the ideals of the organised allotment movement. The Allotment Federation has emphasised the importance of allotment areas when the government has been forming recreational goals and has also kept well to the fore as regards providing advice on cultivation. The allotment movement experienced an upsurge in the late 1980s. New areas were established, the number of members increased, the federation took part in shows, exhibitions and development projects. Together with two other garden organisations, FOR (the National Organisation of Leisure Gardening Societies) was formed. The international commitment expanded. An international congress served to manifest the success of the Swedish allotment movement. When public debate focused on environmental issues, the positive attitude to allotments increased among the public and the media, but the federation has also had to adjust to the harsh financial climate of the 1990s.
The primary task of the Allotment Federation has always been to directly support activities in the now near 300 member societies in which the joint responsibility offers a feeling of solidarity. Interest in gardening is increasing and there is great demand for allotments. They are essential to an ecologically sustainable society, promote public health, improve our diet and are appreciated by many people with no garden of their own. The allotment movement faces a bright future, becoming a more and more important asset to our cities.

Karin Becker and Barbro Klein
With Swedish Eyes. A Multicultural Garden Territory 1990 and 2000

This article focuses on a territory of 91 adjacent gardening plots in one of Stockholm’s many satellite towns where immigrants from all over the world live side by side with working-class Swedes. The authors have conducted fieldwork in this territory since 1988, and in this article compare the territory around 1990 with the prevailing situation ten years later. The article emphasises the ways Swedish gardeners have regarded their foreign neighbours, and also addresses broader questions. What do people of radically different ethnic, religious and linguistic backgrounds learn from one another when they work year after year in close physical and visual proximity? What different gardening techniques, crop preferences, aesthetic ideals and ethical norms are learned, adapted or rejected?
Around 1990, wide variation in gardening practices, aesthetic preferences, and styles of social interaction was apparent. Swedes and other North Europeans congregated in the northern end of the territory, East Asians on the western edges and Middle Easterners toward the south. Culturally distinct gardening practices were easily identified, and the Swedish gardeners had simplified these into three basic types. The “Swedish” type included, in addition to Swedish gardens, Finns and other North Europeans who were accepted as “us”. These gardeners shared a fondness for flowers, picket fences, and sturdy, carefully maintained verandas. All gardened “organically” and maintained composts. “ Turkish” was the Swedish term for gardens maintained by Christian or Muslim immigrants from countries in Western Asia. While Swedes admired the skill with which the Middle Eastern gardeners raised such produce as mangold, romaine, leeks, and garlic, they found other practices, such as the lack of flowers, strange. A particular eyesore was the many spontaneously arranged seating areas with tables covered with torn plastic in loud colours. The “Chinese” plots, all gardened by Vietnamese refugees originally from China, were even more exotic to the Swedes. They commented on the absence of seating areas, that all the gardening was done by women, and that they raised primarily greens and cabbage. The Swedes were particularly critical of the Chinese gardeners’ abundant harvests, as many as five per year. This accomplishment required the use of artificial fertilizers, and led to the most heated of the many conflicts, infecting the growers’ association that all gardeners were required to join. Indeed, it was striking how little people learned from one another in terms of gardening practices and how closely they kept to their own ethnic groups, despite the proximity of their gardens.
The gardens continued to flourish, despite conflicts and segregation, and many of the same gardeners were still on this territory ten years later. Although some conflicts remained and separate neighbourhoods and distinctive cultural patterns persisted, considerable change had taken place. The growers’ association, although still dominated by Swedes, now proudly called itself “A Multicultural Association”, which would have been unthinkable in 1990. Furthermore, all the gardeners, not only those from northern Europe, seemed far more settled. Many immigrants had built elaborate verandas and greenhouses, while maintaining their own practices and preferences in terms of crops and growing techniques. Indeed, for many of the gardeners, this territory had provided a way to root themselves in a new land and at the same time continue to observe traditions and taste preferences shaped far away. In this sense, the garden territory constitutes a particularly intriguing microcosm for the study of processes through which transnational migrants resettle and make homes in new worlds.

Lars Ulvenstam
Letter from the Allotment

Senior citizen Ulvenstam strolls to his and his wife Lena’s small cottage in Vita Bergen on Söder in Stockholm from late April to late autumn. In his briefcase he brings coffee and cheese sandwiches. His letter from the allotment describes all the garden delights: lilies of the valley and the warbling of the blackbird, the flowering cherry tree, the bird cherry and the lilac, the smell of honeysuckle and the hedgehog rustling at sunset. He sees school children go on long summer holidays, his own time quickly slipping by. August, the harvest month, brings cherries, currants and raspberries.
The official name of the summer retreat is ‘Plot 25’ at the Barnängen Allotment Area, but he refers to it as ‘The Kip’. It is paradise, quite literally, since paradise is a Persian loan word for garden.
His letter from the allotment also takes history into account, both Roman gardeners and people involved in the history of allotments in Sweden. Taking stories about Anna Lindhagen, Lenin, etc. as his starting point, the author reflects on the ideas of the allotment movement and the development of allotment life and society, along with demands of standardisation and a demand for freedom that is hard to extinguish, what people do to a garden and what a garden does to people.
His wife Lena is the cultivator, or Earth Mother, bringing flowers and vegetables to life. And the floral skies of spring are transformed to sweet-pickled pears and fruit syrup; the plots become lovingly composed meals. The poetic and somewhat melancholy portrayal of a rich and happy retirement at the allotment ends with a wish that at some point in time be transformed into a tree with peace and warmth and a moment of rest in the garden-patch.

Mats Janson
The Skansen Allotment Area

As early as in the 1980s Skansen received a cottage from South Tantolunden. In collaboration with the Nordiska museet and the Institute of Ethnology, a project to gather information on the area from which the cottage came was instigated. The cottage was selected as an example of the development and history of an allotment area. The area was photographed, drawings and sketches were made and an ethnologist studied the society archives and interviewed the colonists.
The allotment project in Skansen was dormant until the early 1990s but with the assistance of the allotment society, work to lay the plots and renovate the cottage began in summer 1995. The Skansen Allotment Area opened on 10 August 1997. A significant popular movement received a home in Skansen.
The location chosen lies on the outskirts of the town quarters. Nature has many similarities to the area in Tanto and the two cottages and plots should be seen as a segment of a Tanto quarter. The cottages are located on the rise with the cultivable land in front. One of the two plots represents the 1920s and is dominated by utility plants, while the other represents the 1940s with more room for ‘non-utility’ plants. The cottages are fairly similar but of different colours. They are sparsely decorated and resemble the type cottages created around 1900. The Tanto cottages, however, are not slavishly modelled on the type drawings. Colonists have often used surplus wood from construction sites for their cottages. The veranda was an important part as far as contentment was concerned. The cottage interior represents the two different decades through wallpaper, furniture and other details. A red fence runs along the pathways in the area and a raspberry hedge separates the plots.
Photographic material from the Stockholm Real Estate & Transport along with various editions of the magazine Koloniträdgården (The Allotment) have been used when reconstructing the patches, cottages, fences, etc. in Skansen. The magazine included advice on cultivation applicable to conditions in Skansen, as it have been for colonists in the past. Hopefully, the allotments in Skansen can contribute to an increased interest in old varieties and cultivation in accordance with traditional methods, perhaps also to providing a place of harmony for rushed big-city dwellers.