Creative Balcony Gardening Erasmus Project

Project Title

Creative Balcony Gardening

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Creativity

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Environment and climate change; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

A pandemic is not just a medical phenomenon; it affects individuals and society and causes disruption, anxiety, stress, stigma, and xenophobia. The behaviour of an individual as a unit of society or a community has changed as had its effect on the dynamics of every individual in Europe and beyond. As more and more people are forced to stay home in self-isolation to prevent further flow of the COVID-19 governments must take the necessary measures to provide mental health support as prescribed by experts.

In light of these exceptional circumstances, the project takes up the challenge to support society by putting creative balcony gardening as its focal point, to support innovation in education and provide opportunities for the personal, socio-educational, and professional development of people in Europe.

Partners of this project agreed that young adults, in general, play an essential role in Europe’s civil society, and they are the most affected by the harmful effects of this pandemic. Balcony gardening has the potential to increase the target groups’ health and wellbeing effectively. It is suitable for boosting self-esteem, good for the hearth, reduces stress, can make people happy precisely what human needs during the restrictions as our daily routines have changed.

Gardening in the Age of Coronavirus – The Balcony Gardens
With as much as one-quarter of the world’s population currently in coronavirus lockdown now is the time to use your time and make a balcony garden to keep safe and healthy too. Scientific evidence shows how gardening and being in a garden will help to keep you well.
1.Gardens provide a place for experiencing nature which is proven to benefit mental health, cognitive functioning, and emotional wellbeing.
2.Gardening reduces depression, anxiety, obesity and heart disease as well as increasing life satisfaction, quality of life, and sense of community.
3.Gardens are essential to supporting recovery from illness, and merely looking at gardens can reduce stress, blood pressure, and muscle tension.
Using plants to brighten up the terraces are not their only function, plants can be used in an innovative and creative way and can have useful purposes (ex. to use amber as a curtain to darken the rooms or to use cactus fields against pigeons). The creative usage of greens is not well known or used in urban environments. As a prove, it is enough to walk the cities and look for balconies- max. 1 out of 10 terraces have flowers, but it is very rare to see plants as useful decorative items.
The coronavirus lockdown provides the time and opportunity to create the garden that we always wanted, or we didn’t know we want, producing a sense of price and of course, pleasure for adults and their households.

Our objective is to promote balcony gardening among adults in order to obtain the following benefits for them on a personal level and for the local communities:
– to reduce elevated levels of adverse mental health conditions, substance use, and suicidal ideation reported by adults
– to raise awareness of balcony gardening, environmental challenges and climate/change
– to develop competencies needed for a sustainable approach to life
– to develop methodologies for acquiring balcony gardening skills
– to test innovative practices from the project’s countries by implementing them in the base of the projects “green platform”

Project’s elements:
1. Three management meetings: a kick-off meeting – on-line, a mid-term meeting in Hungary, an evaluation meeting in Slovakia.
2. Development of two intellectual outputs:
1) Balcony Gardening Creative Tutorial Videos
2) Balcony Gardening E-learning Platform
3. Eight multiplier events (in Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania, Poland).

CABBAGE the Balcony gardening project, which has gardening as its axis of activation for young adults who are living in an urban environment, where the lack of green areas is a well-known issue.
Our project is a community-building movement based on mutual communication and commonly defined aims by European partnering organizations. The priority of our project is to catalyze development skills and help young adults to achieve new competencies and skills which will boost creativity and support development through urban balcony gardening.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 94295 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gyorsan Energikusan Extrémen Kódoló Club Egyesület & Country: HU

Project Partners

• Stowarzyszenie Doradców na Rzecz Rozwoju Obszarów Wiejskich
• Marthos o.z.
• VsI “Inovatyvi karta”
• ORIEL ETS