Project
Garden to Connect
About the Project
Garden to Connect is an initiative that creates green life by recycling PVC pipes for urban gardens.
Physical inactivity, mental unhealthiness, social isolation and lack of connection to nature are major challenges in our time. Garden to Connect creates a relational space for togetherness and learning, where we share knowledge and actively make people, seeds and plants grow. Garden to Connect is a space where we reconnect with ourselves, get closer to each other and nature.
Garden to Connect is a concrete example of how we make urban spaces more sustainable, inclusive and green by recycling construction waste into urban gardens.
Traditional urban gardens are often built from resource-intensive materials such as steel, cement or terracotta. By giving plastic pipes a new life as plant containers, we use fewer resources and reduce CO2 emissions. The gardens can be placed anywhere: on roofs, in courtyards, parks or public spaces. Garden to Connect contributes to a necessary change in our cities. We must live more sustainably, and growing plants together in a local community can bring people closer to each other and to nature. Waste plastic pipes are free, they are available to everyone and therefore inclusive.
The pipes may not be pretty at first glance. Yet climate change and the biodiversity crisis need a change where functionality develops its own aesthetics. Garden to Connect started on a small scale in Aarhus, Denmark in 2015. Since then, the project has expanded nationally and internationally. Below you can see glimpses of activities from Garden to Connect in Denmark and Rwanda. In Rwanda, Garden to Connect has created edible gardens in collaboration with vulnerable children and adults, and we have drummed and danced for health.