Abstract
The Prinzessinnengarten is an experimental urban community garden located in Berlin’s central Kreuzberg
neighborhood, northwest of Kottbusser Tor and just off Moritzplatz. Since 2009, the garden has hosted a
variety of agricultural and social initiatives, including a potato research station, beds of herbs, flower beds,
and beehives – all of which find a home between and under the garden’s trees, which have been slowly but
surely maturing along with the garden and its people. The garden is built atop the buried ruins of a department store that was bombed and destroyed during World War II. Throughout the cold war, the lot
stayed abandoned, despite numerous proposals from West-German planners for the Kreuzberg neighborhood, which was then still located at the edge of their half of the city.