Today, urban gardens became a permanent exhibit at the Plateau in front of the Svilara Cultural Station.
First and second graders of the ‘Ivan Gundulić’ Primary School made urban gardens at the plateau in front of Svilara, together with coordinators Vesela Mačkić and Aleksandra Ičević. They have been planting their own plants for years now. This way, children will have an opportunity to take care of plants every day, as well as to hang out and share experiences with the older generations of the Almaš neighbourhood.
Seedlings were raised and plants were grown and nurtured by the students themselves. In the end, they planted all the plants in urban gardens of the Svilara Cultural Station.
Modern lifestyle and the pandemic crisis enhanced people’s need for nature. However, the city, the concrete and the lack of green spaces don’t make this need easy. Plants can be grown in jars, pots, cans, wooden flowerpots on windows, balconies and so on. However, this way of growing plants has its advantages too.
In bigger cities, there are garden initiatives that promote urban agriculture, while the citizens have been growing agricultural plants within their homes for a very long time. They’ve been learning about all this together, passing the knowledge on to others as well, inspiring them to do the same. This is very significant for the Almaš neighbourhood since every house used to have their own gardens within their backyards in the past.
Gardens have an educational character and a lot of benefits too: social (a meeting place for neighbours and friends), sanitary/health (green parts of a plant positively affect the relationship between oxygen and carbon dioxide) and therapeutic – beautiful colours, scents and tastes.
The project organisers are the ‘Almašani’ Association and the ‘Ivan Gunduluć’ Primary School, while the Svilara Cultural Station and the Serbian National Theatre are project partners.
Special thanks to DEPO workers for the Serbian National Theatre scenography and plant containers, as well as director Radoslav Milenković and Milјena Vučković, set designer of the ‘Ivona – kneginja Burgundska’ play, who gave permission to use parts of this play’s scenography.
Photo: Uroš Dožić
