🇸🇪 Returnees and settlers with green growth

On Solskensvägen in Sävast, returnees and settlers Jenny and Viktor Malmqvist have created a lush oasis. In a double sense, they consolidate the concept of “what you sow, you reap” with their own green growth in the growing soil of Boden.

Boden’s green industrial growth and the development of a sustainable society has many similarities with creating and nurturing a growing garden. Planning, finding the advantages of the place and using them, making the right choices, having foresight and patience, protecting and hardening, supporting and nurturing, reconciling rapid growth and long-term plans, and sometimes having to rethink and daring to try new things. All these factors come together both in the social transformation and in Jenny Malmqvist’s gardening philosophy.

Jenny is originally from Södra Bredåker and her husband Viktor from Svartbjörnsbyn, both in the municipality of Boden. After a little more than ten years elsewhere, they returned home to Boden. They were among the first to start building on the new Brännan residential area in Sävast in 2018. Over time, more and more new villas have sprung up around them, with inspiring designs and magnificent views of the Lule River that follow the changing seasons. While a thick white blanket of snow glistens in the winter sun over the dormant garden on Solskensvägen in Sävast, the first seeds have already been germinated and nurtured in the warmth, before being moved to the orangery on the farm.

“When we moved here, I felt strongly that I wanted to try to do something with the plot of land we had been given. Cultivating your land and preserving green environments adds value on so many different levels. Being able to pass this on to children is one of my biggest drivers for a sustainable future, even if it is on a small scale,” says Jenny.

Jenny is a high school teacher in adult education, both remotely and on site in Norrbotten and Västerbotten. At the same time, the dream of trying to grow your own food has grown into a burning interest and courses in garden design. Their garden on Solskensvägen has developed into a place that is visited both spontaneously by passers-by and during organized gardening courses. Jenny has now gone one step further and started her own business to share more knowledge and inspiration with the burgeoning interest in farming in the north. The company Grow by Jenny combines her interest in growing with her pedagogy, experience in digital teaching and different types of educational processes. She collaborates with other local gardening and health companies and looks forward to contributing to the knowledge and inspiration of the growing city of Boden.

“I think there is so much going on here that is interesting, such as the link between cultivation and social sustainability, and industrial waste heat that can be used for greenhouses. My hope is that more and more local collaborations in the green sector will be able to emerge so that our municipality’s sustainability policy can be at the forefront of our region”, says Jenny.

Are you also interested in becoming part of the growing Boden? Read more on our Moving to Boden page.

Available plots can be found HERE.

Photo KOMM/Municipality of Boden

Originally published on 21 February by BodenNXT.

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