On 25 September 2023, La Poste issued a stamp on shared gardens, in the extension of the working gardens that appeared in the nineteenth century, all over the territory, these green spaces, animated and cultivated in common by the inhabitants, value biodiversity and strengthen the links between generations.

They have a simple name but their reality is multifaceted, changing according to contexts and associations: shared gardens are defined by the Ministry of Ecological Transition as spaces created or animated collectively, the aim of which is to develop social bonds of proximity through social, cultural or educational activities and are accessible to the public. They have been growing at a high speed in almost all regions of France for about 20 years.

The concept was born in 1997 when an informal network of associations is set up under the name of the "Garden in all its states". Its charter, entitled “Land-Sharing”, unites the thousands of groups and governance structures, all of which respond to a desire to reclaim collective spaces and to a form of resistance to landscape homogenization and artificial soil.

The movement is part of a long tradition, including that of the working gardens developed by Abbé Lemire from 1896, but various examples exist in other countries. Socially inspired and hygienist, these working-class gardens will become family gardens after World War II, but their flourishing will faltering in the 1970s. The dynamism found in this new incarnation stems from a bundle of needs and ambitions – those of citizens, associations, communities, local planners, social mediators, educators or landscape technicians – who find, in these open plots, a way to reinvent forms of sociability and solidarity around nurturing production. By linking environmental concerns and social issues, by promoting the diversity of audiences, they propose activities that are all responses to the challenges of the time, to the ecological, social, urban and democratic crises and to the profound changes in our societies.