Making time for street gardens

Street soils and vegetation are increasingly central to urban agendas for healthier, more sustainable cities. In Berlin, small roadside plots are informally cared for by residents as gardens: spaces of sociality, creativity, and multispecies conviviality. Yet, despite their multiple benefits, these practices remain excluded from formal planning frameworks. This paper highlights the ecological, spatial, and material value of such everyday care acts, framing them as part of an emerging typology of urban gardens within Berlin’s evolving landscape. Drawing on both conventional methods and experimental tools, like a citizen science soil counter-mapping project, the research develops the notion of care-time to describe how everyday proximity and sustained attention shape street gardens as liminal spatio-temporal domains. It reflects on their capacity to sustain intertwined human and non-human temporalities, render urban soil care visible, and support street ecosystems, reimagining the street as a site of participation, cohabitation, and alternative governance.