Community gardens have an increasingly place in public policies because of their social and environmental role. Far from being a fad, community gardens are entering a dynamic of several decades and are now at the heart of the action of municipalities, regions, federations. Their role is also recognized at the European level, with many projects funded by European programmes (URBACT, Horizon 2020, Erasmus Plus). Gardeniser Plus, which brings together 7 countries (France, Italy, United Kingdom, Poland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark) is a project for the exchange of good practice which aims, through a series of learning activities, to bring together professionals and volunteers working in community gardens, whatever their legal form, to enable a transfer of knowledge and innovation. A total of 70 people will benefit from mobility across the 7 countries: 14 trainers and 56 shared garden leaders. Gardeniser Plus will seek to maximise the impact of the project within all partner countries, to reach a diversity of profiles, organisations and territories. The project will mainly consist of three phases: training of trainers based on pre-existing training developed in the framework of the European projects Gardeniser and then Gardeniser Pro mixed with discussion about their own reality and practices, organisation of learning activities to enable this exchange of good practice, then restitution at local level with workshops. Through the meeting of professionals and the exchange of good practices, Gardeniser Plus will allow, in the wake of the previous EU GO, Gardeniser and Gardeniser Pro projects, to strengthen the skills of its actors, to promote the sustainability of community gardens and to show their potential to the various political decision-makers.
From its conception, Gardeniser Plus has had a number of objectives: - to develop the skills of shared garden leaders and volunteers through local training and learning activities abroad - to encourage them to join, beyond the project, the dynamics of recognition of the professional figure of the Gardeniser which developed these last years in through the previous EU Go, Gardeniser and Gardeniser Pro projects - to promote the exchange of good practices between the shared gardens of the seven partner countries of the project - to contribute to the development of a European network that brings together cities, community gardens and training organizations, like the project consortium
Gardeniser Plus is a project that aims to support the development of shared gardens in Europe, at a time when they are playing an increasingly important role: they are not only places of agricultural production, which allow their volunteers to feed themselves for part of the year, but also real social laboratories and third places that contribute to community development and the well-being of the communities in which they are located. In full development in the world for the last twenty years, their sustainability is still fragile. This is why we developed the Gardeniser training, available on the Gardeniser.eu platform, to support their development: a good gardener can indeed be a very bad garden organizer, so it is necessary to train the right people to animate them, without which shared gardens are called to perish very quickly. The Plus of Gardeniser Plus aims to allow people to participate not only in local trainings, but also in trainings in other European countries in a logic of cross-fertilization of ideas.