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Contribution short abstract

With (practices of) planting and the speculative intervention of a wild apple tree in Berlin's "Moawald", this contribution stimulates thinking about urban nature as commons for multi-species city dwellers.

Contribution long abstract

Public urban space appears to be open to, at least temporarily, use by humans and non-humans. However, permanent or communal appropriations must be negotiated, or even fought for, with various authorities (van Dooren & Rose 2012; Stavrides 2016).

This paper explores the multispecies collaborative transformation of a public green space into a space for communal experimentation with urban spaces. Building on experimental and speculative approaches of ‘sensing of botanical sensoria’ (Myers 2014), this contribution undertakes a ‘sensing with botanical sensoria’, specifically with that of a wild apple tree. Together with about 400 others, it is growing into a Tiny Forest – one of the first in Berlin's public space. These vegetal city dwellers were planted by a grassroots initiative that introduces Tiny Forests as cross-species, collaboratively designed and used “Kiezwälder“ (“neighborhood forests”). “Kiezwälder” are intended to take root in urban soils, intertwine, provide living, feeding, and recreational space for birds, insects, rodents, humans, and many others. They are expected to provide shade, cool and filter air – in short, revitalize urban spaces of the Anthropocene in new and different ways.

Drawing together the practices of commoning urban land through planting, as initiated by the “Kiezwald” initiative with the speculative intervention of this wild apple in Berlin's “Moawald”, this paper reflects upon cities as spaces for more-than-human co-creation (Fincher & Iveson 2015). It stimulates thinking about urban nature as commons (Müller 2014; Bartoletti & Faccioli 2024) with value for others beyond humans, as well as about ethnography as a more-than-human collaboration.