Mela­nie Öhlen­bach works as a free­lan­ce Jour­na­list and wri­tes main­ly about the Gar­den and sus­taina­bi­li­ty topics. She grew up on a farm with a gar­den, orchards, chi­ckens and rab­bits and later redis­co­ver­ed gar­dening for hers­elf. Sin­ce 2013, she has been gro­wing up to 50 dif­fe­rent varie­ties of herbs, vege­ta­bles, fruit and flowers on her six squa­re meter bal­c­o­ny in Bre­men. On her Bal­c­o­ny gar­den blog Kis­ten­grün she has been pas­sing on her expe­ri­ence sin­ce 2014. You can meet her on Fri­days at Radio Bre­men One as Gar­den expert lis­ten. Her five books “Mein Stadt­bal­kon: Gar­ten­glück auf klei­nem Raum”, “Grü­ner geht’s nicht: Nach­hal­tig gärt­nern auf dem Bal­kon”, “Coo­le Ern­te: Bal­kon­gärt­nern im Win­ter”, “Pflück­bar” and, brand new this Janu­ary, “Kli­ma­hel­den auf dem Bal­kon” were published by Kos­mos-Ver­lag.

Lec­tu­re con­tent:

Crea­ting and main­tai­ning a bal­c­o­ny gar­den is a real chall­enge in times of cli­ma­te chan­ge: the sea­sons are chan­ging; the sum­mer is get­ting lon­ger and hot­ter, the win­ter mil­der and shorter. Heat, drought, storms and hea­vy rain requi­re cle­ver plan­ting and care to ensu­re that plants thri­ve in extre­me loca­ti­ons. And water, soil and fer­ti­li­zer beco­me valuable resour­ces that need to be used wise­ly and con­ser­ved. At the same time, gree­n­ery in the city is more important than ever — for peo­p­le and ani­mals. So the ques­ti­on ari­ses: how can you design a sus­tainable bal­c­o­ny gar­den? Mela­nie gives us tips and ins­truc­tions with pic­tures for a cli­ma­te-fri­end­ly urban bal­c­o­ny.