You are travelling along in Germany, and suddenly on the side of the railway tracks there is a cluster of fenced-in tiny houses surrounded by small gardens. Are these actual homes? Are they camping grounds for seasonal workers? Or is this where the garden gnomes live when they aren't in your garden?
Actually, these little plots of land are called "Schrebergarten" but how did this idea for tiny gardens get started? Because so many Germans live in apartments without yards, the Schrebergarten, a little plot of land usually at the edge of a city, gives them a chance to get out in the fresh air and work in the garden.
This movement, which is now nationwide, was the brainchild of Dr Moritz Schreber, a Leipzig University Professor who specialised in childen's health. He worried that the children growing up in the cities would be stunted physically and emotionally if they could not go out to play in the countryside, and insisted that playgrounds be built to ensure that childen would properly socialise.
After his death in 1861, Leipzig school principal Ernst Innozenz Hauschild established the first Schrebergarten as a playground for children on the outskirts of Leipzig. To supplement the healthy air and exercise, vegetable gardens were planted. Slowly, the adults took control of the green play spaces, and planted family gardens in the plots. Fences went up, and people made sure that their place was theirs alone.
The Schrebergarten movement spread all over Germany and beyond, with pieces of land on the edge of cities zoned for Schrebergartens which were leased out to families. There they could spent their evenings or weekends puttering away, growing their own vegetables and watching the sun set over their little patch of land. My Opa would sit there in his shorts and socks and sandals watching the world go by while Oma tended her flowers.
Each little plot had its own "Gartenlaube" or tiny house. It wasn't meant for sleep-overs but many people did sleep there on warm summer nights, as did my Opa whom I sometimes accompanied on his trips out to his Schrebergarten. That was in the 1950s. Much later, Schrebergarten were thought to be antiquated "Kitsch" where garden gnomes multiplied.
However, there has been a renaissance in Schrebergarten, not only in Germany but also here at "Riverbend" where I have my own little Schrebergarten and sleep-out on my own acreage - click here - where I can wear my socks and sandals and practise my German orderliness.
