As annunced Open Source Gardens is represented with a village at this year's Chaos Communication Camp. We bring a raised bed full of open source seeds and plants to be present in the Bits&Trees Habitat.

Lightning Talks

For the first time we run a dedicated “sprouting knowledge” session also known as “lightning talks”. We have just started our call for participation and we are looking for inspiring ideas and talks about everything related to open source and gardening: From software to hardware, from constructing your diy raised bed to maintaining a farmbot, from running a community garden to running open olitor, from plant-identification to garden management ... share your best practices with us!

To take part please send a mail to contact@opensourcegardens.info with a short description of your talk. We will let you know your acceptance by the end of the week.

The sprouting knowledge session will happen on Thursday, 17. August, at 18:00 hours in the workshop tent in the Bits&Bäume Habitat.

Schedule of events

Please find all up to date information on our dedicated village page, here is an overview of our events and activities as is on 8. August:

• “Gemeinsam Gemüse Gärtnern”, a talk by Bettina on Tuesday, 15. August at 15:00
• “Eine bessere Welt ist pflanzbar”, a workshop with Coco and Dreirik on Wednesday, 16. August at 14:00
• “Open Source Gardeners* Unite”, a gathering for everyone interested on Thursday, 17. August at 14:00
• “Sprouting Knowledge”, a lightning talk session on Thursday, 17. August at 18:00 (link to follow)
• “Growing the Open Source Gardens”, a gathering for activists on Friday, 18. August at 14:00

Activities

• We bring an Open Source Seeds Collection for you to pick up and join our movement
• We offer a Seed Exchange Point to share your own seeds

#cccamp #cccamp23 #seed #exchange #open #source #gardens

Dear OSGardeners*,

welcome to the first bouquet of the Open Source Gardens in 2023. We will briefly review what happened within our movement since the last bouquet and glimpse on what is ahead of us. “Unfortunately” so many things have happened, they will not fit into this bouquet, ... but no worries, we keep it short and precise and hope you enjoy the read.

If you like to receive our irregular bouquets and news directly into your inbox, subsribe to our news-list.

OSG now has a logo and a corporate design

At the end of 2022 we have revealed our logo: The Open Source Dandelion. Since then we have taken several steps to create a corporate design and visual recognition effect. Our webpages have seen a major relaunch and we have produced stickers to also visually grow into the outside world.

Join our team!

We are looking for nice people to join our movement. No matter what your background is, where you live or what your favorite plant is, we welcome any contributions. Join us as one of our contributors, developers, translators, designers or anyting else!

If you find yourself somewhere in these roles and you like to join our cause and get to know other people who are passionate about Open Source Gardens as well, [read more background on what you can do]() or directly join our public Matrix room called OSG's Webroom: https://app.element.io/#/room/#osg-webroom:matrix.org

Actions and Presentations

Once more, and third time in consecutive years, from March to April, we have been running another seed spreading campaign #ConnectingGardens. Also we joined forces with Bits&Trees to spread Open Source Seeds on the Tech[no]fixes conference as well as re:publica. And we have two representations coming up: Erik Albers speaks about Open Source Gardens at the Bits&Trees meeting Berlin and we are planning a presentation at the Chaos Communication Camp. If you like to join us, send us a message and feel very welcome.

thank you very much for reading up to here and happy gardening!

Erik for the Open Source Gardens

What are open source seeds? And how can open source seeds sustainably help us to overcome the monoculture on the field and the monopolization in the agricultural sector? How can I contribute with my garden and is the better world really plantable?

On Thursday 29.6.23 Erik Albers will talk about open source seeds and technologies and the associated gardeners* community Open Source Gardens at the Bits&Trees meeting in the c-base Berlin. Problems of intellectual limitation rights are discussed, for example patents. At the same time ways out of the misery are illuminated with the help of Open Source. And of course, there will be retrospectives and outlooks into the activities and ideas of the community and how you can participate.

No need to expect a classical lecture but rather a relaxed round of discussions. There will be pictures to see, an open source plant will be on site, as well as open source seeds to take away and plant yourself. Besides, questions can be asked and also brought seeds can be exchanged. Admission is 19:00, start 19:30.

After introducing our logo at the end of 2022, we now also have produced a sticker \°/

And so does it look on a photo:

The sticker is 6cm in diameter and composed of our logo in the center, surrounded by a circle with a hole to free the seeds, flying away from the open sourced dandelion in the center (see our logo description for more details on it). The circle is sourrounded by the slogan “Openness sown – Freeedom grown” and our URL “www.opensourcegardens.info” followed by a closing circle.

Spread the sticker

The sticker will now be spread on events we participate, for example at the Chaos Communication Camp. And it can also be ordered by you for a small donation to spread them in your hackerspace, community garden or any other interesting community space or sticker box. If so, please get in contact

Dear Open Source Gardeners*

We are excited to announce that Open Source Gardens will be participating in this year's Chaos Communication Camp. The camp is organized by the Chaos Computer Club and brings together hackers, activists, researchers, and technology enthusiasts from around the globe. It provides a unique platform for sharing knowledge, exploring the intersection of technology and society – everything embedded in a camp-like experience. As a community dedicated to open-source gardening and cultivating freedom, we are thrilled to be there.

On-site we will join the Bits&Bäume-Habitat that is a movement that brings together different actors from civil society,working in the intersections of digitalisation and sustainability. We believe that Open Source Gardens can be an integral part towards a more sustainable digitalisation and permacomputing. more details will follow soon, but here is a teaser of our so-far planned representation:

If you're passionate about open-source gardening, care about seed saving, or simply want to learn more about us, we would love to meet you at the Chaos Communication Camp. If you like to join us on-site and give us a helping hand, please get in contact via mail or in the fediverse.

Or, if you like to join our team and help us already in the preparation for example with designing information material, updating our website or translating our message, please read how to contribute here.

Dear fellows, we are looking for nice people to join our movement. No matter what your background is, where you live or what your favorite plant is, we welcome any contributions. These could be:

• Contributors: Do you enjoy writing, explaining, researching? We have several ideas of content that we like to see on our pages, from a “how to start your first breeding” to “open source software you can use to maintain your garden” and look for contributors. Or maybe you have your own ideas or like to write the next blog post?

• Developers: We deploy our website through a git repository on the non-profit organisation Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/opensourcegardens the page is written in plain HTML/CSS so far and we would love to keep it as simple as possible – following permacomputing design principles. We look for people who have interest joining our cause in developing our website following these principles.

• Translators: You like the content on www.opensourcegardens.info and you like to help us bringing the message into your mother tongue? Please get in contact and we can help in prioritizing and organizing your translations.

• Designers: In the last months we created a logo and a relaunch of our website and soon we will have our first sticker being produced. We still have so much more ideas about posters, infographics, handouts and more though, and we would love to speed up its creation. So if you have a passion for designing promotion material and alike using Free Software / Open Source please join our cause.

• Anything else? You are deep into the fediverse, you have a podcast, you love to create movies or to breed new varieties ... whatever you are into that you think could be of interest to our movement and we forgot to mention here, please bring it to the table!

If you find yourself in the text above and you like to join our cause and get to know other people who are passionate about Open Source Gardens as well, join our public Matrix room OSG's Webroom: https://app.element.io/#/room/#osg-webroom:matrix.org

On purpose we have one room for all because we believe that cross-disciplinary thoughts and activities can boost creativity and motivation.

Looking forward to meeting you!

And we do it again: We repeat our sseed sending activity #ConnectingGardens from last year and the year before to help people open sourcing their gardens.

https://opensourcegardens.info/connecting-gardens.en.html

Same Same but different

As usual, we send out starter kits including varieties of Open Source Seeds, but this year – apart from the usual suspects Vivaroma, Sunviva and Black Heart – including brand new varieties, one called Märchenglanz and the other two so new that they will only become Open Source licensed later this year: “Märchengranat” and “Märchensnack”. Be aware that the latter varieties (all “Märchen...”) are so brandnew, that this season there are just very few seeds available and unfortunately we can only send you a sample each. On the other hand, that means you can pioneer new Open Source varieties and we encourage you to save and share some seeds at the end of the season to help other people grow these varieties next year and get them spread. We send out these seeds together with a call to share pictures and stories online, in social media or other relevant channels. For example in our new Matrix room

Please help us to spread the good news

If you have friends who missed the activity last year or if you know people around Europe that could be interested in these starter kits or you know a community garden that should participate or ... let them know! Talk to them, forward this mail and help us share the news via social media.

We are excited to announce the relaunch of our website with a brand new design that follows the art of our Open Source Dandelion logo. The website has been designed with a natural color palette, creating a warm and welcoming environment for all visitors. We wanted visitors to offer an open garden feeling.

Another goal of our redesign was to simplify the user experience, making it easier for everyone to find what they need. We have streamlined the navigation, making it more intuitive and user-friendly. Whether you are looking for information on Open Source Seeds, Open Source Technologies, or community gardening, you should now be able to find it more easy and quickly.

We hope the new website will be a valuable resource for our community, providing information and inspiration for anyone interested in Open Source Gardens. We welcome your feedback and suggestions as we continue to improve and grow our online presence.