The Idea Team

We are a transdisciplinary team made up of various departments from Freie Universität and external partners from the fields of art and business.

Together, we are committed to preserving biodiversity and protecting the climate on campus and in the city. It is important to us that we involve as many people as possible in our project and use our apple orchard as an example to show how concrete measures and good education can promote biodiversity and climate resilience on campus.

The project is led by Karola Braun-Wanke, coordinator of the SUSTAIN IT! initiative, and Prof. Dr. Matthias Rillig, AG Rillig, Department of Biology. In our hands-on lab, we involve other stakeholders and experts from Freie Universität Berlin and the city of Berlin, such as the campus management of the Technical Department, students from various disciplines, the Blühender Campus initiative, UniGardening@SUSTAIN IT!, the NUN coordination office, a terrapreta specialist, a plant ecologist, a soil researcher, the district's green space office, a wild bee expert, a freelance artist, tree experts and a pomologist.

About the Idea

On the campus of Freie Universität Berlin, more and more fruit trees and orchards are being lost to development or are in a worrying state in some cases. One such endangered apple orchard is located on Otto-von-Simson-Straße on the Dahlem campus. This apple meadow is not only a small place of biodiversity, but also a popular place for FU members and Berlin citizens to linger.

As a project team, it is important to us to preserve this small apple orchard with our hands-on laboratory and to create a long-term learning and meeting place on the topics of biodiversity and climate protection and to make it visible and tangible.

At the heart of our hands-on laboratory is a two-semester, transdisciplinary seminar in the ABV area of Sustainable Development. Together with students and experts from various fields, we would like to first explore the apple orchard and then consider how we can preserve and promote the biodiversity of animals and plants and their habitats. At the same time, we want to use our project to talk to other FU members and local residents and raise their awareness of biodiversity conservation.

The aim of our hands-on lab is to jointly develop a concept of measures to improve soil, species, climate and water protection. This is to be presented to the Technical Department in fall 2023 and then tested for feasibility. With this project, we want to make a practical contribution to achieving the goals of the Berlin Biodiversity Strategy and the FU Berlin's Climate Emergency Declaration.

The seminar started in the summer semester 2023. Weitere Informationen unter: https://www.fu-berlin.de/vv/de/lv/798602?m=348955&pc=478016&sm=682860

Conclusion and outlook

We are very pleased that, despite the organizational and time constraints, we were able to fully achieve both our short-term and medium-term project goals. What we take away from the project is how valuable networking and good contacts are and how important it is to work together with others in an institution like the FU, which can sometimes be a bit confusing. Communication with the relevant contact persons worked well, enabling us to implement even short-term measures on schedule. In addition, the project showed us how important and valuable student participation is in shaping our campus. The students showed great commitment, partly because they found the action-oriented participatory lab to save the apple orchard meaningful and inspiring. They were amazed at how much new content, background information, and methods they had acquired and how much they had put into practice in the apple orchard.

We were pleasantly surprised by the success of our transdisciplinary and action-oriented approach. We noticed that the interdisciplinary group of students was very open to the many different topics, and our external partners and speakers also expressed their high appreciation. Our participatory hands-on laboratory, modeled on the example, can serve as a blueprint for other green spaces at the FU Berlin that are in need of renovation.

Moving forward, we hope that the design and action proposals developed as part of our project for the redesign, renovation, and socio-ecological enhancement of this culturally and historically significant green space will also be implemented. The next step should be to work with a landscape architecture firm to professionally review and plan the implementation. Together with the technical department, we want to consider how we can develop the site into a place of learning and well-being for people, animals, and plants by implementing the measures.

Contact

Karola Braun-Wanke: karola.braun-wanke@fu-berlin.de

Judith Hübner: judith.huebner@fu-berlin.de