Research & reports

· Wikipedia (English) · Spain

An English-language Wikipedia article on the Horta of Valencia, the historic agricultural area surrounding metropolitan Valencia, covering 631.9 km2 with a 2019 population of 1,567,118. Its traditional Arab-era irrigation system was designated a FAO Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS) in 2019 as the 'Historical Waterscape of l'Horta de Valencia.'

· Wikipedia (italiano) · Italy

An Italian Wikipedia article on Parco Agricolo Sud Milano, established on 23 April 1990 under Lombardy regional law (LR 24), covering 46,300 hectares across roughly 60 municipalities. More than 1,400 farms operate within the park, with cereals accounting for 43% of cultivation, rice 22%, and forage 16%. Forty-one traditional irrigated meadows (marcite) are protected within the park, alongside native mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, plus reported invasive species such as nutria.

· Viquipèdia (Catalan Wikipedia) · Spain

The Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat is a protected agricultural area (about 3,473 ha, with 2,938 ha designated as farmland) in the Llobregat river delta within the Barcelona metropolitan region, managed by a consortium established in 1998. Vegetables account for 63% of crops, with fruit trees making up most of the rest. Spanning 14 municipalities, it functions as an institutional framework preserving agricultural landscape and wetland ecosystems amid urban expansion.

· Wikipedia (German) · Germany

This article on green roofs in Germany explains that some major cities subsidize up to 50% of installation costs, and reduced stormwater fees (averaging €0.46/m2/year, up to €1.12/m2/year in Cologne) are also used to encourage adoption. Green roofs can be mandated in municipal development plans and used as ecological compensation measures, with about 8 million m2 newly greened annually nationwide, over 80% of it extensive systems.

· Wikipedia · United Kingdom

According to the English Wikipedia article 'Manor Garden Allotments', the Manor Garden Allotments in London was a 4.5-acre (18,000 m2), 80-plot allotment site established in 1924 by Major Arthur Villiers. It was cleared in October 2007 to make way for landscaping of the London 2012 Olympic Park, and tenants were moved to a temporary site two kilometres away. Restoration on the original site and a 2.1-hectare provision of replacement plots were promised, but the successor Pudding Mill Lane allotments did not open until roughly four years after the Games ended.

· Wikipedia · United Kingdom

This Wikipedia article covers Incredible Edible, an urban gardening movement started in 2007 in Todmorden, UK by Pamela Warhurst, Mary Clear and others, run on a 'three spinning plates' model of community (public-space growing anyone can pick from), business (supporting local food firms), and learning (food education). As of 2018 there were 120 official UK groups and over 700 worldwide; UK groups reported a 37% year-on-year rise in produce, 9,763 sqm of growing land, 4,861 participants, and 207 events. The project received a £500,000 grant from the Big Lottery Fund.

European Commission · European Commission (single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu) · Europe

This is the European Commission's official Critical Raw Materials (CRM) page. It confirms that both 'Phosphorus' and 'Phosphate Rock' appear as separate entries on the EU's 2023 fifth CRM list. The page illustrates supply-concentration risk with examples for other materials (China supplying 100% of heavy rare earth elements, Turkey 99% of boron, South Africa over 71% of platinum group metals), but does not itself state a specific EU import-dependency figure for phosphorus or phosphate rock.

· Wikipedia · Europe

This Wikipedia article on allotment gardening covers its history and national systems. In the United Kingdom, an 1809 engraving of Birmingham already shows allotment gardens surrounding the town, and the 'Great Somerford Free Gardens' in Wiltshire were founded in 1809; the 1908 Small Holdings and Allotments Act legalized allotments, amended in 1922 and 1950, with plot numbers rising from 244,268 in 1873 to a peak of about 1.5 million in 1918 before declining to roughly 300,000 by 2009. In Germany, 'Schrebergarten' plots trace to the 'Schreber movement' begun in Leipzig in 1864, formalized by the 1919 Small Gardens and Small Leaseholds Land Law; there are now about 1.4 million allotments covering 470 square kilometers, including 833 allotment complexes in Berlin alone. In France, family gardens that emerged in the late 19th century are managed by the 'Fédération Nationale des Jardins Familiaux et Collectifs,' with about 135,000 members. In the Netherlands, the article states the first allotment garden was founded in 1838, there are now 240,000 allotment gardens, and the 'Algemeen Verbond van Volkstuindersverenigingen in Nederland' (AVVN) was founded in 1928.

· Wikipedia · Netherlands

This Wikipedia article on Wageningen University & Research states it was founded in 1876 as the Rijkslandbouwschool (National Agricultural School), renamed the Agricultural and Forestry College in 1896 and the National Agricultural, Horticulture and Forestry College in 1904, before becoming a degree-awarding institution named 'Rijks Landbouw Hoogeschool' under the Academic Education Act on 9 March 1918 — a date now celebrated as the university's dies natalis. The article states the university is highly ranked globally in agriculture, ranking 1st worldwide in Agriculture and Forestry in the QS World University Rankings 2022, 19th in Life Sciences in Times Higher Education 2022, and 1st in Food Science & Technology in the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2017. It states the university has about 13,564 students.

· Wikipedia · Netherlands

The URL 'Agriculture in the Netherlands' redirects to Wikipedia's general 'Netherlands' article. Despite being a densely populated country of 41,850 km2 and over 18 million people, the article states the Netherlands is the world's second largest exporter of food and agricultural products by value, owing to its fertile soil, mild climate, intensive agriculture, and inventiveness.

· Wikipédia (français) · France

French Wikipedia entry on 'jardin ouvrier' (workers' garden), tracing origins to Félicie Hervieu's initiative in Sedan (1889), Abbé Lemire's 1896 league, the rapid growth of gardens in the Paris region from 48 in 1904 to 1,515 in 1913, and a nationwide total of 250,000 gardens by the end of World War II. The law of 26 July 1952 formalized the term 'jardins familiaux'.

· Wikipedia (de) · Germany

German Kleingärten (allotment gardens) trace back to early-19th-century 'poor gardens' (Armengärten), with the first Schreber plot opened in Leipzig's Johannapark in 1865. Today about 15,000 clubs organized under 20 state federations and the national umbrella BKD manage roughly 867,092 registered plots, out of over 1 million plots nationwide covering about 46,000 hectares. The average plot size is 370 m²; as of 2008 the average transfer fee was €1,900 (€3,300 in large cities), average annual cost was €373, and the average user age was 60.

· Wikipedia (de) · Germany

Germany's Federal Allotment Garden Act (BKleingG) was enacted on 28 February 1983 and took effect 1 April 1983 (last amended 19 September 2006, effective 1 October 2006). A Kleingarten must not exceed 400 m², and a garden shed (Gartenlaube) may be at most 24 m² including a covered terrace and must not be suitable for permanent habitation. Federal Court of Justice (BGH) case law holds that at least one third of the plot area must be used for growing garden produce for personal consumption, and that a Kleingarten site must comprise at least five individual plots.

Buglife · Buglife · United Kingdom

An introduction to Buglife's 'B-Lines' initiative, which states that over 97% of the UK's flower-rich grasslands (an area the size of Wales) have been lost since the 1930s, and describes a nationwide network of flower-rich habitat 'stepping stones' linking existing wildlife areas across the countryside and towns. B-Lines have been mapped across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, with a target to create and restore at least 150,000 hectares of flower-rich habitat across the UK.

NHS England · NHS England · United Kingdom

NHS England's official page on 'social prescribing', a form of personalised care in which GPs and other health professionals refer patients via link workers to non-clinical, community-based support (group activities, advice services, etc.), centred on the question 'what matters to me?'. It targets people with one or more long-term conditions, those needing low-level mental health support, people who are socially isolated or lonely, and those with complex social needs. NHS England set a goal of at least 900,000 people being referred to social prescribing by 2023/24.

Plinth · Plinth · United Kingdom

Published 5 April 2026 and updated 14 June 2026. Full cost recovery means funders covering not only a project's direct costs but its proportional share of overheads — rent, finance, IT, HR and chief-executive time. The article works through an example where two of ten staff (20 per cent of capacity) deliver a project, so £28,000 of £140,000 in annual overheads is added to £85,000 of direct costs for a £113,000 budget, and notes that overhead rates of 15–25 per cent are common sector guidance. It argues that accepting grants below true cost is a structural funding problem rather than a budgeting error, with consequences including staff burnout and governance risk, and notes that charity staff earn roughly 7 per cent less per hour than equivalent roles elsewhere in the economy.

Bundesverband der Kleingartenvereine Deutschlands (BKD) · Bundesverband der Kleingartenvereine Deutschlands (BKD) · Germany

The national statistics page of the German federation of allotment garden associations (BKD). It gives the base figures — 867,092 plots, 44,000 hectares, an average plot of 370 square metres — along with the three-tier structure of roughly 13,000 clubs, 502 district federations and 20 state federations, membership by state, and a ranking of plots in the 15 largest cities (Berlin about 66,000, Leipzig 39,000). The nationwide average wait for a plot is three years, rising to seven in Berlin and eight in Hamburg. It also shows the skew by which the eastern states excluding Berlin, holding 15 per cent of the population, contain more than half of all allotments.

VGT Gartenfreunde Treptow e. V. · VGT Gartenfreunde Treptow e. V. · Germany

A source page in which the Berlin-Treptow garden association explains the Allotment and Small-Lease Ordinance of 31 July 1919 clause by clause. Section 1 put the rent for non-commercial horticultural land in the hands of the lower administrative authority, to be set in light of local conditions and land values after consulting agricultural and horticultural experts. Section 3 barred the landlord from terminating the lease, gave the holder a right to convert a loan for use into a lease, and a right to demand renewal once a term expired. Under section 4 an allotment office was set up in the Treptow district administration, which lasted until 1938. The association's 1948 statutes, the page notes, still referred back to the 1919 ordinance.

· Wikipedia (Deutsch) · Germany

The article on the history and scale of Germany's national allotment federation. Founded on 21 August 1921 as the Reich federation of German allotment associations, it later became the Bundesverband Deutscher Gartenfreunde and took its present name on 9 September 2023. It now covers more than 13,000 clubs and 20 state bodies, some 900,000 plots on 44,000 hectares used by around five million people — an area equal to 0.25 per cent of Germany's agricultural land. The article also carries the historical figures for 1938: one million members on 45,000 hectares, producing 350 million kg of fruit and 300 million kg of vegetables.

· Wikipedia (Deutsch) · Germany

The article on the VKSK, East Germany's national allotment organisation. Founded in Leipzig on 29 November 1959, it held the exclusive right to establish allotment sites. Membership stood at about 850,000 in 1962 and reached roughly 1.5 million by 1988. An extraordinary congress on 27 October 1990 resolved to dissolve the body with effect from 31 December 1990, and its gardeners and clubs passed into the all-German federation that followed.

Landesverband Berlin der Gartenfreunde e. V. · Landesverband Berlin der Gartenfreunde e. V. · Germany

The Berlin state federation of garden friends tracing its own history. It counts roughly 40,000 'Pflanzer' in Berlin between 1890 and 1910 and places the origin of today's federation in the April 1901 union of all planter associations of Berlin and its surroundings. After a series of First World War emergency decrees capped rent increases and obliged municipalities to provide land for cultivation, the Allotment and Small-Lease Ordinance of 31 July 1919 imposed rent control, banned leasing for profit and allowed land to be secured compulsorily. On 20 October 1919 the board of Berlin's colonists voted to rename their body the central federation of German allotment associations; by 1929 the Berlin provincial federation had 66,570 members, and that year Rehberge in Wedding opened as what the page calls Germany's first permanent allotment colony.

Bundesverband der Kleingartenvereine Deutschlands (BKD) · Bundesverband der Kleingartenvereine Deutschlands (BKD) · Germany

The national allotment federation's own history page. It sorts the nineteenth-century origins into six lines — poor gardens, factory gardens, Red Cross workers' gardens, the Berlin arbour colonists, gardens of the natural-healing movement and the Schreber gardens — and states that these lacked state legitimation and legal rules, with the absence of termination protection and the head-tenant system (Generalpächtersystem) in particular obstructing lasting protection. It records the passage of the Kleingarten- und Kleinpachtlandordnung by the National Assembly in Weimar on 31 July 1919, which banned commercial head-leasing and required rents to be fixed; the 1909 founding of the central federation; the Reich government's 1916 establishment of a central office for vegetable growing in allotments; the founding of the Reich federation of German allotment associations on 14 August 1921 at the second Reich allotment congress in Bremen; the Nazi-era Gleichschaltung; the post-war split into the VDK (Bochum, 1949) in the West and the VKSK (Leipzig, 1959) in the East; the 1973 renaming to BDG; and the renaming to BKD on 9 September 2023.

Bezirksamt Pankow von Berlin · Bezirksamt Pankow von Berlin (berlin.de) · Germany

An exhibition text in which Berlin's Pankow district office traces the history of allotment sites in the district. It describes the spread of Red Cross workers' gardens in the early twentieth century and their consolidation in 1906 into the Verband deutscher Arbeitergärten vom Roten Kreuz under Alwin Bielefeldt (1857–1942); the head-tenant (Generalpächter) system common around the turn of the century, in which land was leased and sublet with contracts often running for a single year; and the Kleingarten- und Kleinpachtlandordnung of 31 July 1919, which gave legal protection and prohibited head-leasing. On the arbour colonists it records the first permanent municipal lease in Blankenburg on former sewage fields in 1910 and the 1911 formation of a unified federation of arbour colonists of Berlin and surroundings, and cites a 1912 survey finding that 70 per cent of Berlin schoolchildren had never seen a sunrise and 54 per cent no sunset. For the GDR period it notes the founding of the VKSK in 1959, more than a million members by 1988 and its dissolution on 27 October 1990; more recently, that of Berlin's 900 allotment sites roughly 600 were given permanent protection and about 160 only time-limited protection.

· Wikipedia (English) · Germany

The article on the German food crisis of 1916–17 during the First World War. It states that the Allied blockade reduced food supplies by 33 per cent and that the civilian diet fell to 1,560 calories a day by the summer of 1917 and to 1,000 calories a day in winter, against the 3,000 calories said to be needed by a healthy adult male. The name comes from the substitution of fodder swedes (turnips) for the failed potato crop. Female mortality is given as rising 11.5 per cent in 1916 and 30 per cent in 1917 against pre-war rates, and the historian G. J. Meyer is cited, quoting a Berlin physician, for the claim that eighty thousand children died of starvation in 1916. The historian Avner Offer is cited for the estimate that one-fifth to one-third of food could be obtained only through illegal channels.

Deutsche UNESCO-Kommission · Deutsche UNESCO-Kommission · Germany

The German UNESCO Commission's page on the Berlin Modernism Housing Estates, inscribed as World Heritage in 2008. It lists the component estates: Gartenstadt Falkenberg (built 1913–1916), Siedlung Schillerpark (1924–1930), the Großsiedlung Britz or Horseshoe Estate (1925–1930), Waldsiedlung Zehlendorf (1926–1932), Wohnstadt Carl Legien (1928–1930), Weiße Stadt (1929–1931) and Großsiedlung Siemensstadt (1929–1934). Alongside the 2008 inscription it records that the Waldsiedlung Zehlendorf was added in July 2026; that estate has more than 1,900 dwelling units on 70 hectares. The architects named are Bruno Taut, Martin Wagner, Walter Gropius, Hans Scharoun, Hugo Häring and Otto Rudolf Salvisberg.