Karolina Uskakovych
In June 2024, my mom, who lives in Kyiv, shared with me one of David Beckham’s Instagram posts. It featured a video of him harvesting slightly overgrown spring onions while one of his chickens walked in front of the camera.1 Never has my mom truly engaged with a celebrity's social media presence as she did with David Beckham’s countryside lifestyle and his (apparently quite amateur) gardening techniques. This post is a weird shred of evidence that gardening is steadily proving to be a shared fashionable activity worldwide. Ukraine is no exception. This popularity manifests itself in a variety of forms: from the trendy community garden at Samosad, a green space in one of the central areas in Kyiv, to a down-to-earth rural priest-influencer, who comments on religion and the Bible while doing gardening jobs in his backyard.2
“I conduct church service in the morning, work at an agricultural holding during the daytime, and cut grass in my garden in the evening,” says orthodox priest Oleksii while mowing grass with an old-fashioned scythe in one of his short YouTube videos.3
Alas, Ukraine’s prevalent agricultural practices and the country’s construed status of being ‘Europe’s breadbasket’ has brought bitter consequences for its ecosystems and wildlife. According to the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group (UNCG), official data on the percentage of arable land in Ukraine hasn’t been published for eight years. The estimates suggest that, including smallholdings, arable land makes up at least 71% of the country’s total territory.4 Despite land losses due to mining and ongoing warfare, extractive agriculture continues to expand over larger and larger areas. For example, in June 2024, UNCG published sad news that Velykosevastyanivsk Meadows Nature Reserve was illegally ploughed and sown with sunflowers.5
Can we draw a clearer line between the agricultural industry and small-scale gardening in Ukrainian horticulture? Is it possible to find a balance between self-provisioning of food and care for the environment in times of war? Can gardens facilitate attunement to the landscape and curiosity about the natural world? How do Ukrainians build kinship with their land and local environments through these gardens?
Tended is a small poetic exploration of three Ukrainians, Konstantyn, Vadym, and Nastia, and their small-scale gardening practices through photographs and interviews. Some of the images are printed using an anthotype method, a process which develops the pictures through sunlight and uses photosensitive materials from each gardener’s favorite plant species as colourants.
Konstantyn
Konstantyn lives in a trailer and works as a security guard at a partially inhabited residential complex on the outskirts of Kyiv.
He rarely leaves the premises.
Tyre garden: It's just interesting, you know, I’m alone and need to keep myself busy with something. Time passes faster, it's useful, and it feels like I’m doing something for myself. I don't get bored with the garden, walking around all day opening doors can drive you crazy.
The war caused inflation and produce prices increased, but it's not that I necessarily grow plants for food. Seeing how they turn out is interesting and good healthy plants inspire me to do more gardening. I also experimented and planted potatoes in the sand. I covered them with branches because I have three Tuziks (dogs), we'll see how it turns out.
Someone gave me some old tyres and I just filled them up with soil. I was born in a village so I know how to work with land. The residents of the premises give me seeds and seedlings: all the needed materials are here, the only thing required from me is a willingness to garden. I asked the residents for some potassium nitrate and fertilised the soil before planting, but I won’t do it again since the plants are already grown.
I had a dream to plant a rose nearby so that everyone entering the premises could see the rose; I go around looking to see if anyone has one so I can ask for a cutting. I would plant more flowers; they warm my soul, such beauty.
Vadym
Vadym is a pensioner who moved from Kyiv to the village during the COVID-19 pandemic when he retired.
We vacationed in Partenit, Crimea, at a sanatorium (a post-Soviet recreational facility) with the children and brought back a seedling from the local rose nursery about fifteen years ago. It has been growing with us every year since, our Crimean
Rose.
Printed with a mix of tomato, pepper, and eggplant plants as photosensitive material
When the children were little, gardening was a form of solace and psychological relief. Whether for a long time or just for a bit, putting hands in the soil provided grounding. When I retired, I expanded the garden a bit. There was a nearby plot that I liked and I bought it last year. I worked my entire life in a job that involved interacting with people, and in my opinion, that's the hardest kind of work. But here, you do something and you see the result, which you usually don't get to see when working with people, or you even might never see it at all.
I have four greenhouses and three land plots, but I do gardening for pleasure. If it was for income, it would involve a different scale and production. That's hard work. I choose and read up on different varieties of tomatoes. I plant the tomatoes I love, ones that are tasty and beautiful, not the industrial types harvested by machines. Those are hard like rocks. For instance, in my garden, the Bull's Heart tomato variety comes in red, yellow, and orange. We'll see how they turn out.
War changes your attitude towards people, but not towards your favorite activity. This is an old house and we have a stove which we use from autumn to spring to heat the house, utilising the ashes as fertilizer. Stability and autonomy. We made a second exit from the cellar to use it as a bomb shelter. Above it, a 60-year-old apple tree passed down to me from my grandfather. I shaped it so it looks like a willow over the cellar entrance.
Nastia
Nastia is a young artist who moved in with her parents when the war started.
Since childhood, the garden has been a certain obligation. I used to spend summer holidays in my grandmother’s village, where everyone had a garden and my help was needed. Even though, in reality, the work took about two hours, getting ready for it wasn't something I looked forward to. Now, I have a different attitude towards it. My mom does most of the work around our backyard garden, but if she didn't, I'm sure I would. It's fun to have your vegetables and greens right by the house.
At the beginning of the war, we ate all the preserves we had in our cellar, because we didn't know what would happen. And while we used to think about stopping to plant potatoes, we decided to continue this practice. It still provides a certain safety net, oddly constructed from grown and preserved vegetables, but it somehow brings peace of mind.
Printed with a mix of beetroot, salad, cucumber and pumpkin plants as photosensitive material
I
think gardening is oriented towards a result that involves the connection to the ecosystem, but it's not always done consciously. You think, 'I'll grow this plant and eat a salad,' but you don't always think about the stages involved, even though they happen. You watch the stages of a plant's growth, and it changes your attitude towards it. You want a more natural approach, you care about the plant, and you want to avoid certain chemicals. You are more likely to buy cucumbers from some grandma than from plastic crates in the shop because you know how they are grown. You might think, 'Oh, this one is too perfect; I want something more natural.'
1 See https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8POQJuoN4v/?igsh=MWEzaWxoZGtvamN3cg==
2 See https://samosad.kyiv.ua ; TikTok and Youtube account @alexeyfiliuk
3 https://youtube.com/shorts/bJ6F27AQVQc?si=eXg6vCcoFo99GYdp
4 See https://uncg.org.ua/za-rik-v-ukraini-dodatkovo-rozoriuietsia-40-000-ha-zemel/#_ftn1 and https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.K2?locations=UA&name_desc=false
5 https://uncg.org.ua/velykosevastyanivski-yary/