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.
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.
From printings to social media accounts, more and more we saw the need to have a clear logo rather than an image to represent the Open Source Gardens. Now we are super excited to let you know that we have a logo and we call it the Open Source Dandelion:
For a while we have been looking for a logo that represents the core values of Open Source Gardens. Looking at the very first sentence of our vision “We create “Open Source Gardens” and connect people via Open Source (philosophy, seeds, software & hardware) in a horticultural and creative way.” we found the Open Source Dandelion to represent our slogan in its three most important aspects.
With the priceless help from Turtlesprout via Open Source Design, we have been able to run a collective process and create this logo of ours. Thanks a lot to everyone involved and in particular to Turtlesprout.
welcome to the second #bouquet of the Open Source Gardens in 2022. Our bouquet is what other people use to call Newsletter. We will briefly review what happened within our movement in 2022 and glimpse on what is still ahead of us in 2022. 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.
For many of us gardeners*, it is the time of the year to harvest our yield and to enjoy the fruits we planted and took care of throughout the year. And not only is this the time to enjoy our fruits but also to save our seeds for the upcoming seasons.
Saving seeds from the fruits of the current harvest for the plants in the next season is a thousands of years old key practice to grow plants and cultivate new breedings. Not to forget, it is actually the main technology that enabled humankind to finally stop nomadism and settle down.
Our love goes out to Aimee for holding the session, to Björn for preparing the video and to the Center for the Cultivation of Technology for hosting us and letting us record the session.
If you like the video/workshop, spread the word! Help others, saving their seeds!
It is official! We are super excited to run our first public information #booth at a conference called “Bits & Bäume” on October 1st & 2nd 2022. And we are not alone! Together with Open Source Seeds e.V. and Open Source Ecology Germany e.V. we create a common corner with “everything open source – from #seeds to hardware”. And you can be part of it!
Until there is the final link, here is the summary of what we envision:
Open Source Ecology, Open Source Seeds and Open Source Gardens – three initiatives are putting the culture back into agriculture. Together we create the basis for a future in which our basic food supply is developed collectively. Hear everything about free seeds, DIY gardens and open source hardware for a participatory and sustainable society and agriculture.
Behind the scenes, we are working hard now to prepare a pleasant and enlightening experience for you, from seeds to information material to our first public #presentation (thanks to coco!) to an interactive quiz ...
And we are looking for new friends while doing it!
If you come to the conference and if you like Open Source Gardens, this is a perfect momentum to help us and become part of our first ever booth team. To do so you can directly join us in our dedicated Matrix room or write to bundb@opensourcegardens.info. We are looking forward getting to know you and growing the gardens together 🌻
For everyone else who makes it to the conference, we are happy to meet you at the booth. The conference is a one-of-its-kind about #DigitalSustainability and Open Source Gardens is happy to be part of it – thanks to @c47 and coco.
we are looking for your garden pictures! For October this year, thanks to @c47 and @coco, we plan to have the first Open Source Gardens booth ever at a conference called “Bits&Bäume”. At this conference we like to put up a collection of beautiful pictures from beautiful Open Source Gardens all over Europe as a collage, including yours.
