Nordic Garden Allotment Houses

This photo showed up on Facebook of houses surrounded by oval hedges with no roads. The caption was nonsense, so I used Google Image Search to see what it really is, De Runde Haver or Oval Gardens, Nærum, Denmark.

The gardens are in Nærum, Denmark, north of Copenhagen.

A garden association leased the land in 1948 and garden architect Carl Theodor Sørensen designed oval hækomkransede “islands,” each surrounded by a hedge.  Sørensen said. “Neighbors always argued about the common hedge. How should it be cut? How high should it be? Here they each get their own hedge with a no-man’s land between them. That way they don’t have to argue about it!”

Sørensen prepared four proposals for how the gardens should be laid out, but each allotment gardener chooses how the land will be used.

The houses are quite small, most around 237 square feet. There is a public bathroom.

Mostly they are just used during the day. Some people stay over a weekend or as a holiday getaway.

Skansen Swedish Allotment Garden Huts

Skansen is an open-air museum in Sweden. It has examples of traditional Swedish houses and farms.

The Allotment Huts

Skansen’s two allotment huts come from Stockholm’s southern island.

During the First World War there was a serious shortage of food in the cities. Working-class families were allotted plots of ground for growing vegetables. Rain shelters were put up and were later replaced by more elaborate huts.

The allotment with the red hut shows how common vegetables were grown in the 1920s.

The yellow hut belongs to an allotment from the 1940s with flowers and apple trees.

Allotment huts

During the First World War there were shortages of potatoes and other staple foods in the cities. In Stockholm the Council let Tanto be cultivated by working-class families, many of whom worked in the neighbouring sugar refinery. The area was divided up into allotments. Initially people mostly grew potatoes and other vegetables but they later began to cultivate flowers and plants such as aconites, foxgloves, dog roses, rhu-barb, beetroot and broad beans.

Skansen Allotment Huts

You can see inside the little garden allotment cabins. They are furnished as they would have been in the 1920s or ’40s.

This cabin reflects the interior during the First World War.

The other cabin has furnishings from between the wars.

Other Swedish Allotment Garden Cottages

This Garden Allotment Cottage is in Riksby, a suburb in Västerort, Stockholm, Sweden.

This garden allotment cottage dates from 1903. It is the Rothoffska Allotment Cottage, Landskrona, Sweden. Rothoffska was built on the redundant defensive ramparts (The Citadellet). It is now a small museum.

The Citadel Allotments are Sweden’s oldest preserved allotment areas, on the old fortifications of Landskrona Citadel. There are 122 allotments here, featuring colourful floral displays and spectacular ornamental woodwork.

This small, green painted cottage and allotment was built by the Rothoff family in 1903.

Rothoffska Allotment & the Citadel Guide

I love so many of the details on this house. You can see more of the pictures on this Pinterest board, Garden Allotment Houses on Pinterest

Other Scandinavian Cottage Interiors

The rest of the photos in this post are not Allotment Houses. They are photos I have saved and never found a place to use and they kinda go with this post.

The Winter House is a display house in Lillehammer, Norway. It is not an Allotment House.  It was built at the end of the 17th century.

I love the colors, the stencils and the wood details.

Maihaugen is an open-air museum in Norway with more than 200 historic houses from the 13th century until today. It includes; The Rural Area with displays of Country Life in the 1700-1800s, The Town, an inland town in the early 1900s and The Residential Area, homes from the 20th century.  You can see wonderful Scandinavian interior and exterior photos on the museum website, Stiftelsen Lillehammer Maihaugen Museum. If the site isn’t in English, look for the link on the top right.

Off Topic Interiors

These interiors aren’t garden allotment related or Nordic or Scandinavian. But I have been wanting to share them and they seem to go here.

This bedroom is in the Tinsley Living Farm, part of the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana. The Tinsley family lived in this house from around 1887 until around 1920. Don’t you love the child-sized wash stand? This is not an allotment cabin, but it looks like some, with the horizontal wood walls and angled ceiling.

This photo also has absolutely nothing to do with Allotment Houses, but don’t you just love this little fireplace? It is in the Hubbard Cottage at Roosevelt Campobello, in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. You can drive there from Lubec, Maine in the United States. There are four restored cottages. Here is a link to the park brochure that tells something about the cottages; Roosevelt Campobello International Park and Natural Area

Both of these photos were added to Commons by Maine Cottage, a furniture company. They make beautiful painted and upholstered furniture in wonderful colors.

Take a look at some of the rooms they put together; Maine Cottage: Shop The Look.