Restoration of Urban Gardening Practices in Lviv and Their Significance for the Unification of the City’s Community

The practices of gardening and horticulture have spread in the lives of city residents since the birth of E. Howard’s ideas about the garden city, which promoted a combination of the advantages of urban and rural lifestyles. In Lviv, these ideas also spread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the establishment of residential areas of villa development with private gardens, as well as the development of gardening practices at the city administration level. In particular, a well-known example is the nursery in Zalizna Voda Park, which was established by plantation inspector Arnold Röhring. The practices of urban horticulture have been preserved and exist in the city of Lviv in various forms and manifestations. Recently, the ‘Nursery’ project started working in Lviv on the site of the historic nursery in the Zalizna Voda Park, founded by the NGO ‘Plato’ with the support of other NGOs and the Department of Ecology and Natural Resources of Lviv City Council. However, part of the territory with historical greenhouses is still in a dilapidated condition. As part of the course design, students and teachers of the Urban Planning and Design Department of Lviv Polytechnic National University developed a project that aimed to restore the greenhouses of the nursery and create an ecological, modern space for a comfortable stay of visitors. The development of urban gardening and the involvement of the city community with internally displaced persons in gardening practices is an important direction of work in the sense of unification and psychological rehabilitation and adaptation of newly arrived residents. This direction requires the use of specific techniques of landscape architecture and conducting special evidentiary studies of the perception and reactions of people affected by the war.