As part of the 33rd International Agroindustrial Exhibition «Agrorus», the EXPOFORUM Convention and Exhibition Center hosted the Conference «Urban Gardener’s Day», at which Andrey Lyakh, Head of the Directorate for Development of Gardening in St. Petersburg, spoke about the long-term trend of increasing citizens’ interest in life outside the stone jungle. According to him, in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, there are over 3 thousand community gardening groups, in which more than 700 thousand allotments are located.

«Gardeners solve issues of food security, import substitution, and grow over 555 thousand metric tons of fruits and vegetables. People do not buy them in shops and supermarkets, the products are ecologically pure», said Andrey Lyakh. «More than 200 thousand families live on their allotments all year round, because even in winter, comfortable conditions have been created there, so you can live there all year round. A million pensioners are engaged in gardening, almost all of them are from St. Petersburg».

As Lyakh noted, the number of permanent residents of community gardening groups has grown from 40 thousand to 200 thousand persons due to the created conditions. «Over recent years, the state has allocated 1.625 billion rubles, and gardeners themselves have spent about 2.5 billion rubles», said the official, adding that funding for 2024 will amount to 510 million rubles, of which 200 million rubles are directly intended for developing community gardening groups, and almost 300 million rubles are for programs for large families.

Andrey Lyakh stressed that over the past 15 years, more than 1 million m2 of the road infrastructure facilities, thousands of kilometers of energy supply facilities and 200 km of water supply facilities have been built. 127 firefighting and environmental safety facilities and dozens of aid posts have also been built, for residents to receive free medical care under their MHI policy.

With his summer optimism, the manager noted prosperity and development of gardening culture and traditions to have been revered in St. Petersburg since the time of Peter I.

«Each of us can build something, but even oligarchs are unlikely to be able to build 20 km of approach road to a community gardening group. At the initiative of Aleksander Beglov, Governor of St. Petersburg, and with participation of Aleksander Drozdenko, Governor of the Leningrad Region, who signed the relevant agreement, another 16 km of roads will be built this year, and this will make over 32 km in total, moreover, without gardeners’ financial contribution», said Andrey Lyakh.

Focusing on activities of the service in terms of conducting field work with the population, he recalled the legendary contests «Best Balcony» and «Gardener of the Year». The official added that all roads are open to gardeners due to the public council, where all chairpersons are invited if they have questions to the authorities. «We can solve almost any issue within 2 hours», he said triumphantly, explaining that St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region are the only regions having such a scheme.

Aleksander Varenov, his colleague from the Committee on Agroindustrial and Fishery Complex, Deputy Chairman of the Agency for Agroindustrial and Fishery Complex of the Leningrad Region, noted the positive impact of grants and state programs on development of rural areas in the Leningrad Region