Elonkierto community garden
The town of Äänekoski has an Elonkierto community garden, which everyone is welcome to participate in! The goal of the community garden located in Piilolanniemi (b. Eerolankatu 12) is to meet people and work together.
The Elonkierto community garden, located on the shore of Lake Kuhnamo, is intended for beneficial and recreational use. The garden engages residents in their residential area and its development and offers a channel for influence. Like other gardens, Elonkiertok changes and develops all the time.
Release 5.6.2024 February XNUMX: Greetings from the Elonkierto community garden!
Welcome to the garden!
Elonkierto is a place open to everyone. The needs of barrier-free movement have also been taken into account in the design. In the garden, you can take it! -sign with a few grow boxes and a herb hill, the plants of which are freely available to all residents and from which you can harvest.
Some areas are intentionally left untreated for the year of nature's cycle, in order to get more natural plants in the garden and jobs for pollinators. The garden works with an ecological idea, i.e. no fertilizers are used there, and the growth waste is utilized through composts back into the cycle.
The community garden is maintained by the rehabilitative work activities of the Central Finland welfare area. New operators are welcome! Participants are allowed to use the garden shed's tools and grill, otherwise everyone takes care of their own expenses.
Learning and well-being from the garden
The Äänekoski Elonkierto community garden is the first large-scale municipal Green Care project implemented in Finland.
The versatile functions of the Äänekoski garden offer their users e.g. opportunities to learn new skills, create space for different ways of thinking and acting, and unlock the deeper meanings of things. Working together increases sociality and reduces prejudice-based discrimination.
The garden enables the use of nature-based methods as part of Äänekoski's teaching and education services, social and health services, and employment services. The garden serves schools and education in the teaching of sustainable development, biology, social studies, mathematics and skill and art subjects.
It also supports integration, therapeutic gardening and communal food economy. Working and learning together empowers and increases competence. For those who live in an institutional environment, the nearby garden environment creates a new kind of activity, participation and an experience close to nature.
The structure and functionality of the garden
The area of the garden is 1,2 hectares and it consists of three functionally different gardens: a useful and learning garden, a whimsical garden and a sensory and therapy garden.
Trees, shrubs and perennials grow in the Pörriäis garden. Domestic species are preferred there, which support the ecosystem and produce water for pollinators and seeds for birds. The existing trees are complemented by a cypress, a berry rowan, a purple sycamore and a Mongolian maple. Evergreen conifers are represented by narrow Serbian alder trees.
The learning and utility garden is divided into zones that follow the principles of permaculture. Permaculture means designing agricultural and horticultural ecosystems to be ecologically sustainable and striving for self-sufficient food production. It optimizes energy, solar, water and land use. For common use, there is a garden and space for gatherings.
Potatoes, corn, pumpkins and peas are grown on open field farms. The areas are bordered with durable wood. The area continues from between the fruit trees to the place where there are berry bushes. Behind them are beehives.
Os. Eerolankatu 12, Äänekoski.
For more information:
Rehabilitative work activities (Central Finland welfare area) instructor
Ira Oksanen
040 358 0916
ira.oksanen@hyvaks.fi
