Sunday, August 21, 2011

Allotment gardens in Lithuania


Hi, everyone! I hope you had a nice summer. I surely did ;) The weather in Lithuania was not very pleasant with lots of rain and not too warm. But I had great vacations. Now I am back and ready to write more blog posts.

Most of my summer I spent in the allotment garden outside Vilnius, so today I will explain you what it is, because I know that in some countries allotments do not exist.

During the times of the Soviet Union people living in the cities were given small (6-8 a) plots of land outside the city. The areas of these plots were called “collective gardens”. Usually people grew vegetable and fruits in their land and they also could build small houses. Building big serious houses in allotment gardens was forbidden, so the houses there were suitable to live only in summer.

Nowadays allotment gardens still exist near all the biggest cities in Lithuania. But the times have changed, so the primary purpose of having a garden now is not growing vegetables, but having a country-house and a nice place to spend weekends. Now many people build big houses in allotments and move to live there all year long.

My family has a garden near Vilnius. I spent there most of my summer. It is a great place with a nearby lake. Our garden is only about 15 km away from our home in Vilnius. It’s so good to have a quiet place to spend summer days so close to home! We grow ecological vegetables, berries and fruits. And I have lots of fun swimming and fishing in nearby lake.

Here are some photos of our garden and gardens in the neighborhood. 

Flowers
Apples
Allotment gardens
Our house was built many years ago. Definitely, not the most beautiful house in the area... Suitable to live only in summer.
But our summerhouse is the best!
Allotment gardens

8 comments:

Andy said...

my (hopefully) girlfriend has a summer house outside Vilnius and I will be staying there in October for a night... wonder if it is close to yours?

Cybil said...

What is this place called? My garden is in Brinkiskes.

Anonymous said...

I like your pictures. Just a curious question, what is the structure with the blue-green colored roof just to the left of the automobile in the first picture? Also, I noticed that the roof angles are very steep. Is this because of large amounts of snow in the region?

I enjoy reading your blog and look forward to more entries. Jim

Cybil said...

To the left of the automobile is our well with wooden roof :) Not all roofs are very steep, although it snows a lot in Lithuania. But not so much as in mountainous regions ;)

Anonymous said...

Hi.. I see that last week the weather was quite warm in lithuania.
But now I see that the next 10days forcast has temperatures just reaching +20.

Is it quite normal for the temperatures to be this cool for end of august & beginning of september.

Will there still be some warm days do u think? or is summer over in the Baltic States??

Cybil said...

+20 for September is warm! You will be lucky if you don't experience +10 ;)

Tyler Paduraru said...

Spent most of my recent 3 week stay in LT in a garden cottage. Can't remember where it was at, but it was fairly close to the Rasos Cemetery where the heart of Pilsudski is buried.

Cybil said...

I know Rasos, my allotment is on the opposite side of Vilnius.