Angered Gardens is a valuable place, where integration is happening all by itself. A video on the invisible positive aspects of suburban life. On what the media never writes about.

Bondeson met Halime Kadiri in what she describes as ‘the little Paradise’. Halime is an active and committed resident in Angered. Together with many others she spends valuable time in the gardens. She calls it a self-organizing integration project much more effective than any project arranged by the municipal authorities. Yet the gardens are constantly under threat to be removed and closed down.

Halime says: -There is a constant uncertainty for us the gardeners, either because the municipality wants to build houses or because the neighbours are complaining. It’s weird. Because it seems to me there is so much land here in Sweden. I have had an allotment since 1994 in Angered. In total I have had six different allotments. There are currently 77 of them here. 61 of them have cottages too. We have been moved several times back and forth with our plants to different places. On one occasion I moved within the suburb of Angered myself and therefore changed lots voluntarily.

I move my plants from one place to another. Sometimes they survive, sometimes they don’t. To me, proximity to nature means everything. Sometimes I believe that it wouldn´t matter whether I would become homeless or unemployed because from nature I will never return empty-handed. It gives me the very most precious things in life. The allotement is my true bank. It gives me locally produced vegetables and flowers. And I relax. I become another human being here. It has helped me to get back from difficult situations many times. When I go to my garden and dig a little, I bury all of my worries.