By Paulina Olszanka and Agnieszka Witkowicz-Matolicz
In the depths of lockdown, life in a Polish city is difficult. You need a legitimate excuse to leave your apartment. Even a couple walking down the street are supposed to maintain a distance of two metres from each other. The greenest spaces – parks and forests – have all been cordoned off.
Deep in lush woodland outside Warsaw, a road twists and turns among the trees. Colourful rags hang from branches, marking the route. On a Saturday afternoon, the cars come one after another through the heavy rain, all heading in the same direction: the promised land.
Here the city-dwellers can get their fill of fresh air; they can move with ease, free of restrictions. This property, a small plot of land (1,000 m2) with a rambling cottage, has been up for sale for three years. No one had ever really shown interest in it before.
Those who have come here today imagine a summer of quiet, lazy barbecues and their children playing freely among the trees. From here, they’ll be able to keep coronavirus at bay.
Rising demand
The pandemic has changed everything. In their hunger for fresh air and green grass, Poles have gone back to their roots in search of a tiny allotment (in Polish działka, plural działki) to call their own. Advertisements for these działki disappear immediately. The most attractive properties are gone in less than an hour. The market has never seen anything like it.
“Google Analytics actually shows that the moment they imposed domestic restrictions, the demand for small gardens and plots jumped immediately,” says property market analyst Bartosz Turek. “This was a symbolic moment: when people were suddenly banned from going into parks or forests and the prices shot right up.”
In fact, the prices in some areas have seen a fourfold quarter-on-quarter change. For years, allotment owners were making a loss on their properties (after investing in the upkeep), but now even small garden leaseholds in the middle of Warsaw are going for 100,000 zloty a pop.
The demand for properties has even changed the nature of the sale. Poles don’t do auctions, preferring to meet with individual buyers to barter over a set price, with the listed price expected to drop 10-20% in the process.
Yet the current boom in allotment sales has pushed buyers into auction-like scenarios, with even the most shambolic of properties bringing about intense bidding wars among potential buyers.
A Polish institution
The działka is a specific category in Polish life. Plots are generally small, around 300 m2 to 500 m2, and fall into two categories: the-out-of-town cottages akin to the Russian dacha and the smaller socialist-style allotments in cities found in the form of leaseholds.
During communism, they became a Polish institution. Petrol shortages meant trips further afield weren’t possible and securing your own patch of greenery was the only way to escape the difficult, cramped conditions of urban life. Having a well-tended, well-located działka that you directed all of your efforts towards came to be a source of personal pride.
It was also a practical salve during food shortages, when queuing for even the most basic of staples was the norm. On your plot, food produce could be harvested and turned into preserves.
When communism collapsed, better access to food and the opportunity for domestic and international travel all came to be the new markers of prosperity, and the humble działka with its kitsch, ill-proportioned huts became decidedly passé. For much of the three decades after 1989, it was largely the preserve of older generations.
Ogrody Działkowe Paluch, Warsaw (photo: Maria Wilczek)
Stealth-like operations
“Actually, we’ve been seeing a slight trend reversal in the last few years in terms of these small plots of land,” says Turek. “There’s been more of an interest in garden plot leaseholds close to the city, mainly because people are wanting to have more greenery in their lives again.”
In fact, other lifestyle changes such as organic food production and sustainability movements have coincided with a revival in działka culture, which gives people the opportunity to escape the rat race in cities that often know no reprieve.
But the pandemic has brought on a new desperation, with some Poles resorting to stealth-like operations to secure their own patch of land.
“A neighbour told me about a piece of land that had been lying fallow for years, so I decided to hunt the owner down,” says one recent purchaser, Patrycja. “I managed to locate his home address and I walked over to his place, but there was nobody there, so I asked his neighbours where he was. They said he hadn’t been there for two years. So I left a piece of paper and his son called, and that was that, we managed to strike a deal.”
“There was a place close to our house and there were eight other families keen on it,” another buyer, Mira, tells us. “We said we were interested. But we also wanted to check out another plot nearby. Halfway there, we got a call saying that the second one had already been sold, so we quickly went back to confirm the first, but it turned out somebody else had gotten there in the meantime.”
“Luckily, the owner said he would honour the order in which we’d made our appointments. It was pure chance, really.”
Security and certainty
Social researcher Malgorzata Łukianow says that the działka boom is not just about a return to nature, but about security too.
“I think it is important to observe the strategies people employ in order to survive lockdown, psychologically too. When the first measures were introduced, people were locking themselves in their houses, hardly going outside. Now, it seems the pandemic isn’t going to be over soon, so it’s hard to imagine living like this for months on end.”
“I think the działka provides security that we desperately need these days. Home-grown food or comfort food is a part of that, as is being a bit further from crowded places, like big blocks of apartments.”
With an anticipated second wave of COVID-19 and a looming economic crisis, one of the only certainties the działka owners will have over the next few months is the possibility of going to stay on their own plot of land. On these allotments, they will be able to make their lives a little smaller and more contained, without the unnecessary hassles of face masks, hand sanitiser and forever-shifting restrictions.
An oasis of calm
For many, it’s also a long-overdue opportunity to slow things down a bit, at a time when everybody feels generally harried and harassed.
“Our działka is about having a place to relax and rest,” says Paweł. “It’s a bit of a retreat, a way to get away from everyday problems, where you don’t have to look at your watch, and where you can be in nature again.”
“For my family, this plot is about spending time together, away from streets and high-density living,” says Natalia. “It’ll be a bit of an oasis for us, where the kids will have their little corner to play in, and where I’ll be able to grow my own vegetables.”
Though działka prices are expected to go down in the autumn, most owners seem unperturbed by a potential drop in property values, preferring to see their purchase as a revival of a much-loved, though long-neglected tradition.
“My mother couldn’t afford her own działka, but my grandmother, who we lived with, always dreamed of having one…and so did I,” says Mira. “I had always planned to buy my own property, but whenever the opportunity arose, something more important came up.”
“My grandmother had a plot of land, whereas I grew up with a yard, so for me having ‘a piece of my land’ was always important,” says Marta.
Though Covid-19 may have been the impetus for many of the property purchases throughout lockdown, in most cases, the return to the działka has been a long time coming. After thirty years of an accelerated, cosmopolitan and globalised lifestyle, Poles are following global trends in wanting to return to a slower, simpler life.
When asked whether they planned to sell their properties some time in the future, most of the new działka owners came back with a resounding “no”.
“Unless we’re forced to sell it for economic reasons, we plan to stay here on our działka with our family to the very end,” says Paweł. “This property isn’t supposed to be an investment, it’s a dream come true.”
All uncredited images copyright of the authors.
