The Community Gardens Where Refugees Are Putting Down Roots

On a warm morning in June, dozens of people have gathered in a community garden in Traiskirchen, a small town just outside Vienna best known for its refugee center, which is the largest in Austria. The Middle Eastern breakfast, freshly prepared every Saturday in the open kitchen, has become a staple in the town’s social calendar. There’s fresh falafel, generous portions of flatbread, hummus and baba ghanoush, and crisp slices of bell peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers from the organic garden. Colorful canopies above the tables offer some much-needed shade, and a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday” mixes with the squealing laughter of children running around. 

In the garden, people from the refugee center next door are tending to the neat rows of herbs, vegetables and fruit with the help of head gardener Ahmad Makhzoum. The harvest is split equally three ways — a third is sold at the garden’s vegetable stall to support the project, a third is donated to the town’s sozialmärkt, or social market, a non-profit supermarket that caters to people on lower incomes, and the remaining third is freely available to those working at the garden.

“We try to create a place where everyone feels comfortable. They do something in the garden, because working in the garden is fun for everyone, it reduces stress,” says Gholam Mohammadi, who runs the vegetable stall. “But if we notice that someone is unwell, then we’re there for them.”

It’s a scene that would have been unimaginable 10 years ago. In the summer of 2015, Traiskirchen’s refugee center made international headlines due to its extreme overcrowding: Around 4,500 asylum seekers were assigned to the center, despite the fact that it was only designed to house 1,800. The resulting living conditions were deemed “inhumane” by Amnesty International investigators, with 1,500 people sleeping outdoors in tents and makeshift shelters.

To give new arrivals stuck in bureaucratic limbo a meaningful way to spend their time and connect with the community, a group of locals and refugees convinced the municipal government to give them a 2.5-acre plot of land abutting the refugee center.

Asylum seekers are not allowed to work in Austria and there aren’t many options to meet locals, explains Mohammadi, who waited six years to receive asylum. “When you’re in the asylum process, all you have is a roof over your head. You get something to eat, but you can’t really do anything.” 

The consequences are far more than financial. A 2025 report by the Mental Health Foundation in the U.K. found that asylum seekers’ inability to work leads to a loss of self-esteem, loneliness and an increased risk of depression. 

“It’s extremely important in a situation like this to retain a sense of initiative and self-efficacy,” says Dr. Christa Müller, a sociologist researching similar gardening initiatives in Germany. In addition to increased food security, an international review of academic studies published this year found that community gardening can be especially impactful for members of marginalized communities by reducing stress and anxiety, and boosting feelings of self-worth and happiness. Key to this are social connection, learning and a sense of empowerment, as well as physical contact with nature.

Gardens can be healing spaces for people who are dealing with trauma, says Dr. Müller, “but also generally for people who have left their homes, who perhaps don’t know anyone, and can find their place again in this way.”

“When you’re just sitting around all the time you’re stuck thinking about your problems — what will happen to me?” says Mohammadi, who was housed in the nearby town of Baden when he heard about the garden from his friends. “There were a lot of people here from Afghanistan, as well as from other countries and Austria. I thought: This is a place where I can do something.”

While the Garden of Encounter remains the largest such project in Austria, so-called international or intercultural gardens are a popular form of community building in Germany. Their history goes back to the mid-1990s, when a group of families from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Ethiopia, Germany, Iraq and Iran set up a garden in the German city of Göttingen.

Back then, the biggest challenge was winning over the local authorities, says Tassew Shimeles, an Ethiopian agricultural engineer who came to Germany as a refugee in 1980 and co-founded the project: “It is essential that the gardens are institutionally anchored in their community to ensure support and sustainability.”

Today, the International Gardens of Göttingen have expanded to three gardens with almost 90 members from 23 countries. Over 400 other gardens around Germany have followed in their footsteps, supported by the nonprofit Anstiftung, led by Dr. Müller. “A garden is a good place to create reciprocity, exchange ideas and focus on the resources that people already bring with them,” she says.

The idea has also caught on in the U.S.: At Global Gardens Chicago, 42 refugee families started a garden in 2021, while a University of Michigan student who came to the U.S. as a child refugee started The Freedom Garden in cooperation with the university in 2022. Across the U.S., the International Rescue Committee’s New Roots program, which started in 2006, has so far helped develop 64 urban gardens and farms for newcomers in 13 cities across the country.

While the Austrian asylum system is less overwhelmed now that it was in the aftermath of 2015, when Austria took in over 85,000 asylum seekers, the Austrian Court of Audit found that almost two-thirds of cases in 2020 and 2021 still took longer than six months to resolve, with 37 percent taking longer than two years. 

In addition to helping people pass the time as they wait for asylum, being part of a community project offers a chance to develop the connections and language skills that can make it much easier to build a life in Austria once they’ve received their papers. “We’ve had someone here get their asylum on a Wednesday after waiting for four years. By Monday, he had a job,” recalls Bazari. 

The asylum seekers working in the garden receive €110 (about $128 U.S.) per month from the project — the maximum they are allowed to earn while in the asylum process — but that’s just a small thank you, says Mohammadi: “Sometimes people just come here to meet with friends, or to talk to someone about their problems. Nobody is running after them to say, ‘Hey, you have to work!’”

Despite the project’s name, the thriving garden is only a small part of the project’s many activities. On Saturday afternoons, the space is reserved for people from the adjacent refugee center who come here to play sports, practice their German, get help deciphering their paperwork, get advice on the asylum process or just spend a relaxed afternoon outside. 

The team also runs a woodworking shop and a sewing shop, offers catering services and helps refugees left without shelter in winter. During the pandemic, the sewing shop made 6,000 masks, and the woodworkers created an open-air classroom for the local school. As soon as the war started in Ukraine, Bazari drove up with four tons of donations the team had collected from the local community. “We are safe now, but others aren’t,” he says. “When we can help, we help. We don’t wait for the state.”

But funding remains an ongoing challenge, despite financial support from the municipality, says Ulla Krebl, who is in charge of the garden’s finances: “We couldn’t do it without that, but it’s not nearly enough.” Most of the money comes from public donations and the proceeds from their many projects, like the vegetable stall and weekly breakfast.

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The events are not only about the bottom line, but about bringing people from different walks of life together and introducing Austrians to other cultures. “The sooner people are in contact with the locals, the easier it is for them to integrate, especially when they see that they are welcome here,” says Krebl. “But integration is not a one-way street.”

Mohammadi is particularly proud that the garden is growing gandana, a perennial leek from Afghanistan that is key to making authentic bolani, a traditional stuffed flatbread. “We cook Afghani food here, and the Austrians help us make bolani,” he says. “It’s not only the foreigners that have to integrate here — the locals do as well!”