Spring Farmers' Market

It's that time again... the popular Spring Farmers' Market! For the next four Saturdays (10am to 3pm- May 12th, 19th, 26th and June 2nd), local farmers will be selling their produce directly to the public. Besides fruit & vegetables, visitors can find plants, flowers, bread, cheese, sausages, fish and other local products. Vendors have two criteria to meet in order to sell their wares: they have to have grown or made the product themselves and done this no further away than 250 kilometers from the market. This has become a welcome and popular spring event in the Södermalm district over the past few years. Each year it becomes a little bigger... last year there were about 20 vendors and thousands of visitors. The market is located on the street Katarina Bangata (in the SoFo neighbourhood), just a 15 minute walk from the Rival Hotel.
More interested in flea markets than farmers' markets? Click here!

Plans For a New Urban Garden

Plans

I just read about a new, exciting project called På Spåret ("on the tracks") with plans to turn abandoned train tracks into an urban garden. Located in the Skanstull area of the island of Södermalm, several blocks south from the Rival Hotel, these train tracks are a bit of a dead area today... overgrown vegetation with graffiti marked debris. The project has taken its inspiration from Berlin's Prinzessinnengarten and NYC's High Line, part of the new city trend of bringing green areas to urban sprawl. Stockholm is already quite green, with 95% of the population living less than 300 meters from a green area (helping the city get elected as Europe's first Green Capital in 2010).

Future look?

Stockholm City has given the go-ahead for the project and work will begin this spring; not sure when they plan to have it completed... but I will be sure to report on it here! The garden itself will be open for the public to try their hands at gardening, with only ecological produce being grown. There will also be an ecological gardening school, store and café with large outdoor seating area. Furthermore, there will be a daily outdoor farmers market that will expand in size on the weekends. Other plans include cultural events like concerts, gardening seminars and outdoor movie screenings. Keep an eye on their website (linked above, only in Swedish so far) and this blog for further updates.