As an initiative under RUAF, this is not surprisingly so. In this contribution, Oleg Moldakov of the St. Petersburg Downtown Gardening Club, discusses the urban gardening movement in St. Petersburg. Historically, it is predominantly taking place in peri-urban areas, but increasingly also within the city limits. The total area cultivated by city dwellers around the city is 560,000 ha., and in the summer time over 500,000 of them constantly live on their summer residences and other types of buildings on plots. This is more than all agricultural farms of the Leningrad Region.
Urban agriculture is practised in the inner city and in the peri-urban areas.
In the inner city the farming takes place in backyards, in public lands and vacant space near the houses, basements, rooftops, balconies, windowsills. The latter includes the large amount of allotments with weekend or summerhouses, which are worked by Petersburg citizens during weekends in the summer periods. Thousands of urban people spend almost every weekend in these areas from mid-April until the end of October. The agricultural activities have a positive impact on self-sufficiency and provide an important way to solve the poverty and unemployment problems. The history of the urban gardening movement in St. Petersburg dates back to the end of the nineteenth century, when village noblemen moved into the city but kept their farming practices.