Immigration and the Garden as a Workshop: Resettling and Cultural Interaction of Bulgarian Immigrant Groups to Hungary (late 19th–early 20th c.)

The article focuses on the dual meaning of the “garden as a workshop”, a concept developed by Bulgarian immigrant gardeners to Hungary in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.The “garden” was not only a terrain for modernization but also a passkey of integration for Bulgarian immigrants in the host society.On the basis of diverse materials about the migration of Bulgarian gardeners to Hungarian lands, the article outlines the importance of factors, such as liberalization policies in the Habsburg Empire, land availability, water resources, and city markets, as having influenced the arrival and settlement of gardeners in the second half of the 19th century.All these factors are interpreted in the text from the perspective of their role in modernization processes, outlining thus the garden as a space that responded to the new rhythms and demands of modernity, by introducing new technologies for land cultivation, optimizing production, and linking it directly with the urban centres, making thus horticulture a substantial part of the modernizing trends.Highlighting the role Bulgarian gardeners had in this process at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the author argues that the innovative approach to vegetable growing and to agriculture in general shows an alternative pattern of modernization (different from those in the spheres of political systems, culture, and industry) – one that developed in the domain of agriculture.Whilst, on the one hand, this alternative path permitted the modernizing of this work activity and its optimization in line with the new social demands, it also allowed for the integration of Bulgarian gardeners’ community in Bulgaria, laying the grounds for their long-term presence and interaction with Hungarian society.