Athina Garden City | Part 1
Propagation Workshop

Starting point: A – DASH Project Space, Asklipiou 74, 11471 Athens
Walk: from Asklipiou up to the nearby Lycabettus Hill
Workshop: return to A – DASH Project Space to propagate cuttings

The workshop will be limited to 10 participants per day.
Please email adashspace@gmail.com to reserve your place on either Saturday or Sunday 

It has been said that ‘Athens is not a green city’.
It may be truer that ‘Athens was always a dry city’.
But yet, its streets, parks and squares are lined with flowering, fruiting trees and plants continuously growing.
Balconies hang heavy with potted plants while weeds run riot amongst quiet and forgotten places.
Athens is in fact a very green city.
So why do we fail to see the green at our feet?

Athina Garden City is an exploration of the plants of Athens, a project developed by Catriona Gallagher and Fanis Kafantaris. Undertaken in the backyard of A – DASH, the ongoing project proposes the design and planting of a new garden as a host site for responses to the life of plants, in the city and further afield. As the garden grows and develops, further interactions and plants will be introduced. The founding of the garden is a conceptual exercise in horticulture and botany, creating both a testing ground for various responses to plants and a place for people to meet.

Part 1 of Athina Garden City is a workshop on propagation taking place in the days before the 1st of May, when wildflowers are traditionally collected to make wreaths. Cuttings taken from local plants – found in the streets, parks and hills of Athens as well from the balconies, yards and terraces of its homes – will be propagated and grown as the first plants of the new garden at A – DASH space, developed as Part 2 of the project. Workshop participants are invited on a walk up to the nearby Lycabettus hill from A – DASH to collect cuttings of plants and examine the plantlife of the urban environment; a shifting landscape in continuous transition. Cuttings may also be brought from participants’ balconies and local areas to support the garden with a wider variety of plants that encapsulate those that grow, and are grown, in our city.

Athina Garden City is an ongoing project developed by Catriona Gallagher and Fanis Kafantaris. Further iterations of Athina Garden City, including the opening of the new garden, will take place over the course of 2017.

Instagram – @catrigallagher & @faniskaff
#AthinaGardenCity #PlantsinAthens