Balcony school in Berlin
In addition to online education, a face-to-face balcony school for ecological gardening in a small space is being launched in Berlin. It is being held at the Atelier Gardens in Tempelhof, an exciting place of change with a film-historical background.
Workshops Termine & Tickets
SA. 28. März 11:00 – 16:00 Uhr
Der Balkon als Lebensraum für Mensch und Tier
Tierfreundlich gärtnern, Artenvielfalt fördern
SA. 25. April 11:00 – 16:00 Uhr
Sommergemüse anbauen
Workshop: Erfolgreich den Balkon begrünen und Sommergemüse anbauen – reiche Ernte im Frühjahr und Sommer
SA. 30. Mai 11:00 – 16:00 Uhr
Promoting biodiversity on the balcony
Samstag 30. Mai ganztägig im Rahmen des Langer Tag der Stadtnatur
SA. 21. Juni 11:00 – 16:00 Uhr
Vertical cultivation of fruit, salads, vegetables and herbs
Saturday June 21 all day as part of the Fete de la Musique — 3 stages are set up at Atelier Gardens
The Balcony School Berlin
serves private individuals and companies as a show garden for training courses, lectures and workshops on self-sufficiency, sustainable and animal-friendly gardening to promote biodiversity in a small space and as a reference object for vertical cultivation, climate terrace and worm composting. The motto: Every meter counts! My biotope on the balcony. Experience nature and harvest happiness in the middle of the city.
- Ecological gardening in pots, tubs and balcony boxes
- Vertical cultivation of fruit, salads, vegetables and herbs
- Climate terrace for overheated (roof) terraces
- Edible wild plants
- Insect-friendly gardening
- Worm composting of your own organic waste
- Pot gardening library
- for companies SMEs and teams “Green Social Day”, company outing, team building & educational afternoons (team hiking day), Christmas party
Address
Oberlandstrasse 26–35
12099 Berlin
Approach
Best reached by public transport or bicycle.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
U8 U‑Bhf. Hermannstraße or
Hermannstraße S+U station
Then take bus 246 (direction U‑Bhf. Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz) to Oberlandstraße Mitte
(Attention: there are three stops in Oberlandstrasse, the correct one is Oberlandstrasse Mitte. Currently, the 246 bus usually does not leave directly in front of the Hermannstrasse underground/subway station, but instead runs around the corner to Silbersteinstrasse).
U7 U‑Bhf. Neukölln, then take bus 246 Lahnstraße/U‑Bhf. Neukölln (direction U‑Bhf. Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz) to Oberlandstraße Mitte
Car
A100 to exit 21-Oberlandstraße
turn left onto Oberlandstraße until house number 26–35
Please note: There are no parking spaces available on the site itself, but there is a parking lot diagonally opposite.
Atelier Gardens
Atelier Gardens is a unique, exciting 2.5‑hectare campus with a view of Berlin’s famous Tempelhof Airport and Tempelhofer Feld. Known as “UFA Studios Tempelhof” and later as “Berliner Union-Film” or “BUFA”, the site was home to the pioneers of film and looks back on more than 100 years of film and television history. Atelier Gardens is home to change organizations such as WeChange, Changing Cities, Friday for Future, Stadtbienen, Tiny Farms, Kantine Zukunft, Roots Radicals and the Open-air cinema island.
Outer surface
The site was designed by the renowned landscape architecture firm Harris Bugg Studio in London. The collaborative design team includes MVRDV, HS ArchitectsDrees & Sommer, Arup, Buro Happoldkpm3. The project developer is Fabrix from London.
In 2020, the site of the BUFA film studios covered with concrete and only six trees. Since then, 125 trees and 25,000 plants have been planted to create urban nature with great biodiversity for people and animals. One third of the campus has been made permeable and/or planted. The concrete surface was removed and crushed on site and completely reused, avoiding 900 tons of waste that would otherwise have ended up in landfills. Soil phytoremediation and plant communities are at the heart of the planting design.
Awards:
- MIPIM Award for the best urban regeneration project 2023
- Monocle magazine cultural development in the year 2024
- In October 2024, Harris Bugg received an award for the best commercial design project for his work at Atelier Gardens Berlin Pro Landscaper Sustainability and Diversity Awards 2024.
Business offer for teams
Team day on the exciting grounds of Atelier Gardens
Whether a team building & educational afternoon (team hiking day, team day) in spring, summer, fall or as a Christmas party: gardening together creates a resonance space for individual processes and for processes in the team. At the start of a project or at the joint conclusion. With time to garden together, reflect, get to know each other and experience self-sufficiency, nature and biodiversity. There is something new to get to know and marvel at every season on a historic, very inspiring site with an international audience. With benefits for the company, as a private individual, for the urban climate in any case:
- Heat protection
- Quality of stay at break locations
- Health management
- Promote biodiversity.
Gardening to your heart’s content
Here you have the opportunity to learn the basics of organic gardening in a wonderful atmosphere, with the chance to feel, touch, smell and taste. Do you already know what radish flowers and pods taste like? Or the flowers and pods of kale? How many wild bees benefit from these vegetables? What enormous effects the right plants have on the microclimate? The criteria are:
- with nature
- sustainable
- relaxed
- Successful
- animal-friendly
- climate-proof.
Opportunities for teams
Choose from these offers:
- Ecological gardening in pots, tubs and balcony boxes: plant your climate pot or sump pot to take away and copy
- Vertical cultivation of fruit, salads, vegetables and herbs — with tasting
- Advantages of a climate terrace as heat protection, better quality of stay due to a more beautiful, edible break area with ripening tomatoes, grapes, kiwi, passion fruit, blackberries, raspberries, fire beans, fresh parsley and chives for the sandwich, promotion of health management & biodiversity
- Tasting and growing edible wild plants, including benefits for your health and wildlife
Animal-friendly gardening: which low-maintenance, hardy, robust plants, which can also cope in pots in extreme locations, encourage wild bees, hoverflies, beetles and much more? Which of these plants can survive in a sunny location for 2 to 3 weeks without watering, and which only need to be watered once a week?
- How about vermicomposting the organic waste produced?
- Relaxed finale with good conversation and cool/warm drinks sitting on the shady air-conditioned terrace or, depending on availability, on the roof terrace with a sensational view over Berlin
My seminar room: Upcycling 60s GDR living room style
Team building & educational afternoons (team hiking day, team day) in spring, summer or fall or as a Christmas party: Here is a big screen for presentations to underpin all topics with great photos from the organic balcony movement. We are happy to discuss the topic and schedule. I have authentic images of urban gardening for all topics. A Q&A session is possible during and after the talk.
On request, I will send a summary PDF to the participants as well as a sustainability certificate of participation (reportable sustainability report on the project) for the company.
Hot and cold drinks and cookies or catering from the local company on request, of course Roots Radicals.
A team day in summer can end with a movie screening of the Island open-air cinema.
Exemplary topics:
- My biotope on the balcony. Experience nature and harvest happiness in the middle of the city.
- Permaculture on the balcony — Tasty and healthy harvest on small areas
- Planning balconies and terraces and designing them close to nature
- Health from the windowsill or kitchen table: microgreens and sprouts
- I’m planting a pharmacy: medicinal herbs in the balcony box and on the windowsill
- Edible wild plants on balconies and windowsills
- Natural, insect-friendly balcony and windowsill
- Growing winter vegetables
- Four-season gardening on the balcony
- Sustainable gardening in small spaces in the city
- Can you plant animals? Self-sufficiency at the same time?
- Gardening on balconies and windowsills — between self-sufficiency-flower arrangements-animal paradise
- What works on a small balcony or even a windowsill in Berlin City must work even better in the garden in the countryside
- Balcony gardens and window sills with impact: how small areas can have a big ecological effect:
- Balconies as feel-good places for humans and animals. Amazing examples of stepping stone biotopes from the organic balcony movement for hortus balconies, natural balconies, „tidy“ balconies, self-sufficiency in four-season vertical cultivation with winter vegetables and edible wild plants
The microclimate and the Quality of stay at the break location improve through climbing plants, shrubs, vertical use.
Workshop: Promoting biodiversity as a company
What you can expect:
- Practical introduction to the topic: „Promoting biodiversity as a company“ — Learn how you can actively promote biodiversity at your company location using simple means and what resources you should plan for this each year.
- The Contents of the workshop can also be easily used by employees at home, for example on their own balcony.
- For companies without their own space: We will show you how and where you can get actively involved externally in the district and thus support the Promoting biodiversity can.
- Practical tips and application examples: Find out more about ecological islands, even in the smallest of spaces, and their valuable contribution to biodiversity. Take a tour of Atelier Gardens to gain an insight into the variety of possibilities.
- Take a look across the small ecological island to the patchwork of today’s Urban nature and its function for the city’s microclimate. Learn how Biodiversity and Climate protection are connected.
- Optional — joint finale: Afterwards, we invite you to a cozy get-together with drinks and snacks, sitting on the shady air-conditioned terrace or, depending on availability, on the roof terrace with a sensational view over Berlin. Here you can share your impressions, ask questions and enjoy a relaxed exchange.
Join in, become active as a team and support a valuable, species-rich piece of urban nature with us! Every meter counts!
Book your team afternoon or biodiversity workshop here now:
The congress organizer
Hello, I am Birgit Schattling
Balcony ambassador with all her heart and conviction from Berlin City
My Vision is that more people are using their balconies and windowsills use — close to nature, to the Self-sufficiencyas Oases of peace and relaxation. For quality of life in edible cities, preservation of the biodiversity, Climate protection and Oases of well-being with exciting Nature experiences.
Let me help you, Your own dream balcony and at the same time Encourage insects, birds and other animals.
Vita
Birgit Schattling initiated the Organic balcony movement in 2017. it helps (not only) City dwellers again More greenery and self-sufficiency into the cities. It gives practical instructions for Lush, joyful balcony oaseswhich is a boon for People, insects and animals are.
The Berlin balcony gardener, “Nature in the garden” ambassador, Author and Organizer of the 16 Online Organic Balcony Congresses to date Birgit Schattling is Media award winner 2018 of the German Horticultural Society 1822 e.V. In 2017 and 2019, she was responsible for the “European Award for Ecological Gardening” nominated. In 2017, she was awarded a prize in the Green League’s “Toxic-free gardening” competition. Special price for Gardening in the smallest of spaces.
She is a university-certified “Expert advisor for self-sufficiency with edible wild plants”. Your Hortus Bio-Balkon is part of the „Hortus network. Diversity. Beauty. Benefit“. Since 2019 she is Juror for the “Deutschland summt!” planting competition.
For the publishing house Gräfe und Unzer, she wrote the guidebook “My biotope on the balcony. Experience nature and harvest happiness in the middle of the city”. Published by Ulmer Verlag in May 2023 in the #machsustainable-series “My ingenious organic balcony. With great plant combos & DIY projects for more biodiversity and a delicious harvest”.
Feedback
„Nochmals vielen Dank für Ihre Vorstellung des Bio- Balkons, Ihre vielen Tipps und die kompetente Beantwortung unserer Fragen, sowie die informative Führung über das Gelände. Wir waren alle restlos begeistert.“ Ulla Helmer
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