The Botanical garden in Sorgenfri

Participants: Therese Bülow, Vilhelm Christensen, Oscar Eriksson Furunes, Tringa Gashi, Djoana Gueorguieva, Olle Helin, Martin Hornshøj, Elísabet Anna Kristjánsdóttir, Grälls Johan Kvarnström, Fredrika Lindeberg, Rebecca Larsson, Amanda Moberg, Sigrid Soomus, Filip Vest, Marcus Wallström, Vigga Wæhrens.

The vegetable garden in July, 2021.

This was the invitation I sent to all students at Malmö Art Academy on November 18, 2020. For a long time, I had wanted to start a collaborative project. Even though an art school is in many cases a social setting, the individual studio work can at times feel very lonely. And during the Covid-19 pandemic, this solitude became much more evident. At the same time I thought that the project could give me the opportunity school, as well as to the city in which I am relatively new. I was already very interested in relational and participatory art, and for this project I was particularily influenced by Jens Strandberg's Bomassan, Ett rum med utsikt by Maria Andersson, Eva Arnqvist, Karin Lindh and Adriana Seserin, and also Hägerstens botaniska trädgård by Johan Eriksson, Sam Hultin and Ingela Ihrman.

Knowledge production was another point of interest in the project: I wanted to see what happens when a group of people work around a certain topic, but one that no one has much experience of, and to see in which directions the project would go when the framework is open and there isn't a definite end. In other words, the method was to put practice before theory, to learn by doing and to learn from each other. Borrowing the botanical garden as a framework for the project seemed very appropriate. A botanical garden is a garden that is open to the public and is usually run for research purposes. Other botanical gardens I have visited have been inclusive and lively places, even during the pandemic. That it is open to the public also means that we get access to a free audience. None of us in the group had much experience of cultivation (some had grown up in houses, one participant had started up a garden in their courtyard, and I've had an allotment garden for a year), but we all have a lot of experience in the artistic field. As artists and students, everyone has found their own interests and unique methods, and I was sure that a garden based around this, rather than in natural sciences, would lead to a unique artistic botanical garden.

Construction of the garden in May, 2021.

Many people responded to the email, and slowly but surely a botanical society began to take shape. I had pitched my idea earlier to Malmö Stads city planners in charge of the Sorgenfri neighborhood. Sorgenfri has been an industrial area from the end of the 19th century until the 1990s, with activities such as leather tannery, pharmaceutical industry, dry cleaning and a paint factory. Today, they are in the process of transforming it into a residential area. It's an exciting place where anything can happen: a bus garage has been transformed into an art academy, and monumental buildings shoot out of the ground overnight. The city planners liked the idea, and gave us a construction budget and a place for us to carry out the project. The place is called Spiggans Plats (named after “spigga” as they used to call Malmö's trams) and is located between Industrigatan and Spårvägen, about 150 metres away from the Art Academy.

Construction began in the spring. NCC helped by draining the soil, laying new gravel and preparing some cultivation areas. Our group continued the work in May, by setting up a number of pallet collars. Dead plants that we received from the local cemetery formed the basis of the boxes. We then filled them up with soil. A stage was built in the middle of the garden, and a little later, an information sign was also added.

Since Sweden has relatively short summers, you want the plants to start sprouting as early as possible in the year. Already in March, we distributed small pots, soil and seeds among the group, and each of us then germinated plants in our studios. In this way we could work together at a distance, until it was warm enough to work as a group in the physical garden. The northern studios with their attractive cool light, proved to be the worst for cultivation because the plants need strong sun to grow. Thrips and gnats were also persistent problems, but we still managed to get a bunch of plants out when the risk of frost was over. We sowed the remaining seeds in the plein air.

The dye garden with woad, indigo, and other plants.

The plants that can be seen in Sorgenfri's botanical garden come from different places. Some seeds have been shipped from Impecta Fröhandel in Julita. Other plants, such as the artichokes, broad beans and wormwood, are a donation from my allotment garden in Bulltofta. We also have a collection of shrubs from Denmark, and indigo plants from the artist Sigrid Holmwood, as well as squash that has been grown in a closet near Möllevångstorget.

Cigarette butts appear like slugs in the urban garden.

Over time, our different plant categories have more and more overlapped. For example, the marigold is first and foremost a decorative flower, but you can also eat it or produce warm dyes from it. Another example is the parsnip that we found growing wild in an empty lot nearby. The parsnip can be classified both as a herb, root vegetable and weed. In the dye garden, weeds and fungi have begun to grow. But instead of cleaning them away, we attempt to make paint out of them too.

In the summer of 2022, we will pack up our garden to leave room for a permanent square that Malmö Stad will construct on Spiggans Plats. But I believe that there are still good chances for Sorgenfri's botanical garden to live on. Maybe as a garden in one of many other "gaps" in Malmö, or maybe as a nomadic seed bank?