Peace in the Garden

Last fall in the German city of Kassel, a group of about 15 women harvested a bumper crop of pumpkins, squash, and wine grapes from a small community garden. Nothing unusual there, perhaps -- except that the women were from Morocco, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the former Yugoslavia.

The "intercultural garden" in Kassel is one of about 100 in Germany, but the only one run entirely by women. (And after the gardeners had long discussions about the hazards of pesticides, its produce will be totally organic.) The gardens began in 1995, after a group of Bosnian women in Göttingen, waiting out the Balkan conflict, told social workers how much they missed the famous plum and apple orchards of Bosnia's Drina Valley.

There has been adversity along the way. A garden in Berlin had to be placed under police protection after it was targeted by neo-Nazi protesters. In Cologne the gates of another garden have been destroyed three times. And it isn't always easy to coax traditional crops such as Afghan mint, coriander, and Iranian leeks from the mineral-rich German soil. Yet the gardens thrive. Says Behoumi, a
31-year-old from Morocco, "Without the beauty of the garden I could not survive."