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Kleingarten in Berlin: Where the 70,000 Plots Are and How the Wait Really Works

Writer: Yusuf Ucuz
Yusuf Ucuz
1 day ago
6 min read

Every settled Berliner has the moment. The S-Bahn slows between Schönhauser Allee and Bornholmer Straße, the carriage window fills with hedges, apple trees and little wooden houses, and the old thought lands again: one of those, finally. Then autumn comes, the daydream goes back in the drawer, and next year the same conversation happens on the same curve of track.

This year is a reasonable year to stop postponing it. Berlin passed a law in February that permanently protects most of these gardens, the waiting lists move strictly by registration date, and the whole application costs less than a round of drinks. What it takes is not money up front. It is knowing which door to knock on, and being honest about the wait.

What a Kleingarten actually is

A Kleingarten is not a piece of land you buy. You lease it, through a chain that usually runs from the district to an allotment association to you, and the whole arrangement sits on a federal law, the Bundeskleingartengesetz, that trades cheap land for strict rules.

The rules are not small print. They are the deal itself:

  • A plot should not exceed 400 square metres. Most Berlin parcels sit around 250 to 400.

  • The Laube stays under 24 square metres including its covered seating area, and it must not be built or furnished for permanent living. Summer nights are one thing; moving in is a breach of the lease.

  • At least one third of the garden must grow fruit and vegetables. This kleingärtnerische Nutzung is what legally keeps the land classified as allotments, and colonies do check. A pure lawn with a barbecue can collect a warning letter.

  • The lease is capped by law at four times the local rate for commercial fruit and vegetable growing, which is why the Pacht itself stays two-digit to low three-digit while everything else in this city triples.

Entrance gate of the Freudental allotment colony in Berlin-Wedding, with the colony name in an iron arch and a signposted alley behind it

The gate of KGA Freudental in Wedding: behind almost every arch like this is a members' association, a set of rules and a waiting list.

If that sounds like a lot of regulation for a hobby, it is. It is also the reason a garden in the middle of a capital city costs a few hundred euros a year instead of a few hundred euros a month.

Where the 70,000 plots actually are

Berlin's official register counts 1,038 colonies with 70,390 plots on roughly 2,900 hectares, about three percent of the whole city. The supply is real, but it is nowhere near where most of the people who want a plot live.

The register makes the imbalance brutally clear. Pankow holds 10,258 plots and Treptow-Köpenick 9,011. Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, a district of almost 300,000 people, has 228. Mitte manages 1,979. The gardens sit along the S-Bahn belt, the railway curves and the city edge, exactly where the tracks and the space are.

Aerial view of Prenzlauer Berg with a broad belt of allotment gardens wedged between apartment blocks and the curving railway tracks of the Nordkreuz

The Bornholm colonies from above: a whole green district of gardens squeezed between Prenzlauer Berg's tenements and the Nordkreuz rail curve.

I put the entire register on one map below. Every dot is a real colony, sized by how many plots it holds. Tap your district and it shows you the local supply, the largest colonies near you, and the association that runs the waiting list you would actually join.

Two details in the map are worth a second look. The gold dots are railway-land colonies run by the Bahn-Landwirtschaft, a separate organisation with its own lists, and there are 112 of them across town. And the thinner your district looks on the map, the more seriously you should read the strategy section below.

How the Berlin Kleingarten waiting lists really work

You do not apply to the city, and there is no central Berlin queue. Each district has a Bezirksverband der Gartenfreunde, and that association keeps the waiting list for its colonies. The official English overview is on Berlin.de's allotment page, and the umbrella federation with links to the district associations is the Landesverband Berlin der Gartenfreunde.

The mechanics, from the associations' own rules:

  • You register once, usually online, with a small fee. Spandau charges 20 euros, non-refundable; Lichtenberg charges 50 and asks for proof of a Berlin address. Some forms let you name preferred colonies.

  • Offers go out strictly in registration order. Lichtenberg puts it plainly: free plots are offered by date of registration, and applicants should wait for the letter instead of touring colonies to charm the board. That means every month you postpone registering is a month someone else is ahead of you forever.

  • Expect years. Lichtenberg currently states at least 3 to 4 years, Spandau estimates around 5 without commitment. Inner-city lists move slower for the simple reason the map shows: there is almost nothing to hand out.

  • Before the sublease is signed, Lichtenberg asks for a Schufa credit report, and every association will want to see that you actually intend to garden, because the one-third rule lands on them if you do not.

Grass path between hedges and garden plots in the Goldkörnchen allotment colony in Berlin-Kaulsdorf, with small houses and blossoming shrubs

KGA Goldkörnchen in Kaulsdorf: the deep-supply east, where the lists still move at a human pace.

My advice: register in your own district for the location you dream about, and in one deep-supply district you can honestly reach, Treptow-Köpenick, Pankow's northern colonies, Spandau or Reinickendorf. A garden 25 minutes away that exists beats a garden around the corner that never comes. I would rather cycle to Kaulsdorf than wait a decade for Kreuzberg's 228 plots to rotate.

What it really costs

The lease is the cheap part. The number that surprises people is the takeover.

When a tenant gives up a plot, the association values the Laube, the trees and everything planted, and the incoming tenant compensates the outgoing one at that valuated price. The Berlin average is around 4,000 euros, and Spandau's application form quietly expects applicants to be ready to invest at least 1,500. A neglected plot with a rotten shed can cost a few hundred; a loved one with a solid Laube, fruit trees and a water connection can go well past five thousand.

After that, the official English guidance puts running costs around 700 euros a year for lease, association fee, insurance, water and electricity together. Roughly sixty euros a month for a private garden in Berlin is the entire financial argument, and it is a strong one.

One warning from me: plots offered privately on classifieds portals at prices far above any valuation are the known trap in this system. The association assigns the lease, not the seller, and a board can refuse a deal built on an inflated private handover. Go through the list, pay the valuated price, and the same rules that slow you down will protect you the day you leave. Until your first harvest, the weekly markets remain the place to buy the vegetables you are not growing yet.

The February law changed the risk

For decades the quiet fear behind every Berlin Kleingarten was the development plan: colonies were temporary by definition, and a hot housing market kept eyeing 2,900 hectares of hedges. That fear got materially smaller this year.

In February 2026 the Abgeordnetenhaus passed the Kleingartenflächensicherungsgesetz, and Berlin became the first German state to protect its allotments by law. The Senate's own summary counts 56,280 plots on state-owned land, about 2,283 hectares, that are now permanently secured. Converting any of it requires an exception approved by the state parliament plus replacement gardens of equal size nearby.

Garden colony POG with hedges and a wooden Laube inside the green Westpark section of Park am Gleisdreieck in Berlin-Kreuzberg

The POG colony inside Park am Gleisdreieck: Kreuzberg's rail-yard gardens outlasted the freight station around them and now sit in the middle of a park.

Two honest limits. The law covers state land, so the 112 railway-land colonies and privately owned sites stay outside it, and an Abgeordnetenhaus exception is still a door, even if a heavy one. But if the takeover money was the thing holding you back, the ground under that investment is firmer than it has ever been.

My advice for the waiting years

The queue is sorted by one thing only, the date you registered, so the best day to register is today, in your own district and one realistic deep-supply district. Twenty to fifty euros per list is the whole bet.

Then treat the wait as training. A colony is a village: quiet hours are enforced more earnestly than in any Hinterhof, and the same logic as the city's Ruhezeiten rules applies with a garden hose nearby. Spend a Saturday walking a colony's open paths, most welcome visitors on the main ways, and see whether the culture suits you before the letter comes. If what you actually want is green Saturdays now, the forests on your ticket and a community garden bed, the raised beds on Tempelhofer Feld being the most visible, deliver most of the feeling with none of the queue.

And when the letter does come, answer it fast. Offers move to the next name quickly, and after years of waiting, the difference between the dream and the garden is usually one prompt reply, one valuation appointment and one afternoon with a Schufa printout.

Figures above, the register data, association fees and waiting times, were checked on 11 September 2026 against the Senate's colony register and the district associations' own published rules.

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