After years of perturbation, Familly Allotment Garden (ROD) Sigma-Bartycka is alive again. The last 15 years of the garden have not been the easiest. The colony was established in 1982 in the areas appropriated for the employees of the Chief Technical Organization. In 1993, the Mayor of Voivodeship decided that it was a local government area, but in 2006 The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration ruled that the land never ceased to be private property. The owners went to court, which enfranchised them on a few plots of land – strips of land going diagonally through gardens.
The problems began in 2009 when the land was sold to Dom Development, a company which is conducting huge construction investments in Poland. The company applied to the court for eviction of the allotments, but they lost the trial. The court ruled that as long as the developer does not have all the land, but individual plots, eviction will not be possible. Nevertheless, construction crews entered the garden, which – with the support of security guards – demolished the property of the allotment holders and prevented them from using the garden, cutting off the electricity and water. Some gardeners left the area of the plots.
In 2015, young people from the international group Reclaim The Fields started to occupy the abandoned allotment plots, protesting against the takeover of the garden by the developer and, in a broader context, the rules of taking over urban land by construction entrepreneurs. That was the main reason why they occupied plots on Bartycka Street, for which there has been a court dispute for 4 years. During this time, the gardens were being destroyed, and the Kolektyw ROD – Radical Allotment Gardens (acronym from ROD – Rodzinne Ogródki Działkowe, eng. Family Allotment Gardens) started to clean them up and restore their original role. Together with a group of volunteers, the area was tidied up, fruit and vegetable gardens were reactivated, and an alternative system of irrigation and power supply by solar batteries was rebuilt. In 2017, the group left the area due to the personal reasons of members.
Currently, the ROD Sigmaa-Bartycka consists two parts: Sigma and Bartycka, separated by residential buildings, but the area is managed jointly by one management board. In 2018, only 14 of the 90 plots were in use. Now 75% of the plots are occupied and the garden is developing. They have no water and electricity, but the garden community is involved in the garden arrangement and administrative matters. Apart from the 4-meter big main ‘avenue’, there is no common area, no allotment house or office. In the future, they want to create such a common space on 2 empty plots (about 300 m2) and put up a shelter in which picnics with the exchange of plants, seeds etc. could take place.
Allotment holders from ROD Sigma-Bartycka know that their garden functions in the common consciousness, as a garden in the liquidation phase by the developer. They feel a permanent threat. So far, they do not feel safe, hence their hermetic integrity.
