Tending a vegetable garden in post-transitional Ljubljana situates today’s gardeners at a peculiar intersection of fundamentally different ideologies. The widely present scarcity-motivated tradition of bottom-up self-organized community gardening, called ‘vrtičkarstvo’ has begun to be seen as a dysfunctional vestige of the Yugoslav socialist past.

What can a seemingly banal local phenomenon reveal about a contemporary city’s dynamics between design, power, control, and beauty?

The publication explores the conflict through a collage of theoretical and historical research, in-depth interviews with family members enveloped in the activity and recounts of spontaneous conversations with the gardeners, combined with my personal observations and reflections.

The significance and internal logic of the vernacular are documented and archived through photography and typological analysis.