The Toulouse site "Plant with us" brings together landowners and gardeners ready to cultivate them -

C. Perdigau

  • Ten years ago, a resident of the suburbs of Toulouse launched "Plantez chez nous", a site linking gardeners and landowners, ready to let them enjoy it.

  • On the principle of win-win, some can get some air and others see their land maintained, all then share the harvest.

  • With the confinement and the need to return to the earth, exchanges on the site have been multiplied.

For ten years, Betty has been planting her beets, radishes and other zucchini at Bernadette's.

If they live a few kilometers apart, these two inhabitants of the Toulouse metropolitan area had never met before one came to garden with the other.

Bernadette had a very large piece of land which she did not know what to do with and Betty a furious desire to put her hands in the earth, restrained by the small planters in her apartment.

It is by consulting the site "Planchez chez nous" that they naturally found each other.

“I wanted to have contact with nature and I wanted to apply for allotment gardens, but there was an 18-month wait.

So I registered on the site and saw Bernadette's ad, ”explains Betty, who has been growing seasonal vegetables for a decade.

Before coming to her host's house, she sends him a short text, so as not to be intrusive.

In exchange for this little piece of the garden, Bernadette occasionally harvests tomatoes or potatoes, delighted to be able to eat vegetables grown at home.

“When I moved in, I had tried planting tomatoes, but I had no skills.

With Betty, things went well right away, she had no requirements, we said to ourselves that we were going to invent the garden as we went along, ”recalls Bernadette.

With the confinement, she has seen requests for new gardeners flocking.

Among them, Pierre, a permaculture enthusiast who has brought a new touch to the garden and distils his knowledge with his host and co-gardener.

Create social bond

This sharing is the idea that germinated in Chantal Perdigau's mind when she created the Plantez chez nous site.

"There was a desire to encourage people to garden in a natural and local way, but also to barter, be it win-win for the owner of the land as the gardener, who often end up co-gardening together", explains the entrepreneur based in the suburbs of Toulouse.

Today, it has more than 35,000 users and nearly 7,000 advertisements, from the little piece of the garden in the 15th arrondissement of Paris to more than 1,000 m2 in Saint-Anne in Guadeloupe.

Homeowners who often do not have time to maintain their plot when others need to get out of their apartment and indulge in outdoor activities.

"We have seen it with the health crisis, and in particular the confinement, there has been an increase in site traffic, the number of which has been multiplied by", continues Chantal Perdigau, who also promotes the exchange of seeds and all innovative and ecological cultivation methods.

Being able to discuss cultures with its neighbors is also what motivated Reno.

Five years ago, this owner of one of the few houses in the Saint-Michel district to own a large plot of land, imagined creating a shared vegetable garden.

After trying word of mouth, he ended up posting his ad.

And since then, he has four co-gardeners who come regularly to hoe, water, plant and harvest the fruits of their labor.

“My objective was really to exchange ideas, to create social links in the neighborhood.

I didn't know much and we learned together, ”Reno admits.

And it works.

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  • Confinement

  • Gardening

  • Solidarity

  • Toulouse

  • Planet

  • Agriculture

  • Garden