“Allotment Garden Turmoil: Moon Prices and Infidelity Scandal Rock Berlin Scene”

Berlin. Times in the allotment garden sector in Berlin remain turbulent: while there are 19,000 applicants for vacant parcels, according to a report by Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB), this is apparently causing some of the current tenants to demand massively inflated compensation payments for their arbors. At the same time, an infidelity scandal shook the district association of gardeners in Pankow. With around 5,000 members, the second largest in the city, lease payments were apparently not passed on to the state and – as has now become known – not to at least one private landowner either.

According to research by RBB consumer magazine “Super.Markt” some allotment gardeners call for up to 80,000 euros for taking over their gazebo. They do not evaluate the value, but the respective district association. “The land cannot be bought. It is leased,” emphasizes Gert Schoppa, President of the Berlin State Association of Garden Friends. Dagmar Frick from the Lichtenberg district association confirms that the guidelines for determining the value of arbors and greenhouses do not even allow for sums of more than 20,000 euros.

Berlin State Association of Garden Friends warns against excessive compensation payments

President Schoppa therefore urgently warns interested parties: “Anyone who falls for such advertisements must know: They must ultimately be offered a lease contract.” And that is not certain even with a highest bid. There are a total of around 71,000 allotment gardens in Berlin.

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Meanwhile, the allotment gardeners in Pankow are threatened with further adversity. In a letter that the board of the allotment garden association Am Rollberg in Pankow wrote to its members, it says: “The BV (editor’s note: the district association is meant) receives reminders every day.” As reported, the district association of garden enthusiasts Pankow Paid the lease and ancillary costs in recent years only after repeated requests, but again failed to pay an installment of EUR 105,000 due to the state in February of this year.

Pankow: infidelity scandal in the district association of allotment gardeners is expanding

Gerd Hardt, one of the three remaining board members, assured the Berliner Morgenpost that the sum had been transferred but incorrectly booked at the responsible district office. A claim that the responsible city councilor Manuela Anders-Granitzki (CDU) firmly rejects.

However, the sum of the outstanding payment obligations could be much larger. The letter goes on to say: “We now know that the lease was not paid to our landowner.” This endangers the existence of the allotment garden, according to the board of directors of the Am Rollberg association.

According to information from the editors, the allotment garden is located on a property belonging to the church. “The properties usually belong to the local communities,” says the Landeskirche Berlin-Brandenburg-schlesische Oberlausitz. In the case of the Am Rollberg association, this is the Protestant community in Nordend, which could not be reached for comment on Monday afternoon. On the Rollberg, on the other hand, one assures that one has made payments to the district association. What happened to the money there remains unclear. From this club alone, more than 80,000 euros have been paid to the association, but only 30,000 euros are said to be in their account.

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As reported, auditors should help to bring light into the darkness. The remaining board of directors did not succeed at the extra-convened extraordinary association day. The long-standing chairwoman and managing director Viola Kleinau, who resigned at the beginning of February, is said to have carried out all financial transactions up to one day before the meeting – with the signature of one of the other board members. She had previously emphasized that she had withheld the membership fees due to disagreements with the district.

District Association of Garden Friends Pankow is experiencing troubled times

However, this support is now apparently crumbling, and other associations feel compelled to distance themselves. “BV Weißensee is in no way involved in these processes!” It says, for example, on the website of the neighboring association, which is in the same district but is organized independently.

Axel Quandt, himself an allotment gardener in Pankow and for years a critical observer of the processes in the district association, says: “If there are now only 30,000 euros left, the money of the member associations has obviously not just been parked.” He is shocked by the low reserves of the Garden friends in Pankow, who two years ago even increased the additional association fee from 70 to 130 euros. Presumably to plug financial gaps. “I am convinced that even then the information was not properly provided,” says Quandt. The processing of the Pankow allotment scandal is only just beginning