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"Stiftung Interkultur" was founded in January 2003. It is based upon the long-standing cooperation between the Munich research association anstiftung and the 'International Garden association in Göttingen'. The immense success of this intercultural garden project and the widespread interest in its contribution to the integration of immigrants inspired the research association anstiftung to establish the foundation Stiftung Interkultur in January 2003.

The following segments illustrate our concept of intercultural garden projects as fertile ground for intercultural activity:

Intercultural Gardens guarantee biographic continuity
On the basis of collaborative gardening and handicraft, intercultural activities as well as self-developed concepts of education, new opportunities to act and an enlarged field of experience arise throughout our partner projects within the "network of international gardens".

In the intercultural garden projects a variety of ethnic-cultural backgrounds and diverse social standards, habitats and age groups come together. Many of the individuals who are active in the gardens have had to leave everything behind – not just their property but also relationships and a sense of identity. The spirit and purpose of these projects is to cautiously re-establish such connections and therefore to create an opportunity for the people to gain new ground and, similar to a plant, "strike new roots".

The reasons for the immense success in the integration process of the federal wide approved and award winning garden projects, are mainly based upon a specific positioning of the immigrants within a transcultural global scape.
This position enfolds the established connection between the origins and the host country and furthermore guarantees biographic continuity: The current self-initiating and managing gardens constitute in various aspects a sort of passage (in no sense to be mistaken as a one-way street) respectively throughout their own active existence they form a junction between social practice in the country of origin and the host country.

Intercultural gardens and the "fabrication" of intercultural relationships
Due to the interaction of various elements, intercultural gardens are distinctive locations in which inter- and transcultural knowledge is produced. Since this is quasi a by-product of the cultivation of the plants, it is possibly also a fundamental reason for the productivity of the processes taking place. The activities respectively the social practices, occur on quite different levels and this gives it its distinctive nature. In practice, the collective cultivating of plants also includes the sharing and organising of space and time, and the cultural representation and reflexion of ones "own" in comparison to the other represented cultures. Since this exchange of cultural representation takes place openly it is (at least micro-) politically of great importance. It creates an opportunity for the involved cultural groups to preserve their own cultural property and furthermore through processes of communication, negotiations and appreciation to put their culture in relation to others.

The implemented motion therefore has – and this is significant – two sides: On one hand, you can witness processes of preservation and segregation of the own cultural identity being performed by the participants. Whilst on the other hand, due to the preceding condition a reflexive locating of the own cultural status, on an intercultural atlas is brought about. It seems, that precisely this dialectic of re-storing, re-inventing and re-locating the own cultural property in relation to others, improves the valuable learning mechanisms of self – realization and adoption to your surrounding. That this is the intelligent alternative to the one-dimensional reasoning of the 'defining culture', is self evident since, on the level of the individual, the abovementioned process brings about an expansion of its spectrum of possibilities. Due to the instance of being able to maintain your own history and dignity, without having to "claim" this in a defensive position, the immigrants gain the possibility of committing an active social contribution and to phrase and realise their own aims in life.

The elegance of the processes that take place in and beyond the Patchwork's frame, which encloses the continuous with and against each other, is a remarkable phenomenon of social cooperation. These are processes of intense team working, time and space management, mediation and other assignments. Therefore, we regard the essence of the intercultural gardens origin as a "learning organisation", which functions without a fixed hierarchical structure and at the same time remains highly productive. The term 'learning organisation' is very deliberately chosen because in our opinion not only economical cooperations and administrative departments should be awarded with this notion but that in this case it is very appropriate to use the term to emphasise the multifaceted, learning qualities within the garden projects.

In this context, the significance of the connection between the cultivating of the earth and the social creativity expressed in the gardens also plays a vital role. This means that the nourishing potential of nature, the sensuous – physical exchange with nature, the collective cultivating of the ground, the seasonal sprout of the plants and the enrichment of the harvest are fundamental premises for the social success. For the immigrants, gardening is also a work of remembrance and re-embedding, which guarantees the biographic continuity of the individual's "life story". It therefore "nourishes" them, not just physically but also in an ideal-cultural sense and at the same time, with every new season, acts as an investment in the future. Above all this the practical aspects of gardening can be seen as social bonding and sensual processes, which combine various levels of collective and individual existence. A very essential aspect of garden projects such as the one in Göttingen, is that immigrants here get the chance to autonomously develop complex rudiments for education and integration work and hence commit a fundamental contribution to the formation of a "host society" in which immigration is a common phenomena of everyday life. This contribution requires professional supportive structures for fundraising and cooperation, which the Stiftung Interkultur is able to provide. Furthermore, the general social significance of the intercultural garden projects and their practice, must be reflected from various perspectives and given more public attention.