diff --git a/pkg/gardenlinux/scripts/containerd_cgroup_driver.sh b/pkg/gardenlinux/scripts/containerd_cgroup_driver.sh
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..2ed33ae4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pkg/gardenlinux/scripts/containerd_cgroup_driver.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+
+set -Eeuo pipefail
+
+source "$(dirname $0)/g_functions.sh"
+
+# reconfigures containerd to use systemd as a cgroup driver on cgroup v2 enabled systems
+function configure_containerd {
+    desired_cgroup=$1
+    CONTAINERD_CONFIG="/etc/containerd/config.toml"
+
+    if [ ! -s "$CONTAINERD_CONFIG" ]; then
+        echo "$CONTAINERD_CONFIG does not exist" >&2
+        return
+    fi
+
+    if [[ "$desired_cgroup" == "v2" ]]; then
+        echo "Configuring containerd cgroup driver to systemd"
+        sed -i "s/SystemdCgroup *= *false/SystemdCgroup = true/" "$CONTAINERD_CONFIG"
+    else
+        echo "Configuring containerd cgroup driver to cgroupfs"
+        sed -i "s/SystemdCgroup *= *true/SystemdCgroup = false/" "$CONTAINERD_CONFIG"
+    fi
+}
+
+if check_running_containerd_tasks; then
+    configure_containerd "$(check_current_cgroup)"
+
+    # in rare cases it could be that the kubelet.service was already running when
+    # containerd got reconfigured so we restart it to force its ExecStartPre
+    if systemctl is-active kubelet.service; then
+        echo "triggering kubelet restart..."
+        systemctl restart --no-block kubelet.service
+    fi
+fi
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/pkg/gardenlinux/scripts/g_functions.sh b/pkg/gardenlinux/scripts/g_functions.sh
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..305df3ce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pkg/gardenlinux/scripts/g_functions.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+
+set -Eeuo pipefail
+
+function get_fs_of_directory {
+    [ -z "$1" ] || [ ! -d "$1" ] && return
+    echo -n "$(stat -c %T -f "$1")"
+}
+
+function check_current_cgroup {
+    # determining if the system is running cgroupv1 or cgroupv2
+    # using systemd approach as in
+    # https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/d6d450074ff7729d43476804e0e19c049c03141d/src/basic/cgroup-util.c#L2105-L2149
+
+    CGROUP_ID="cgroupfs"
+    CGROUP2_ID="cgroup2fs"
+    TMPFS_ID="tmpfs"
+
+    cgroup_dir_fs="$(get_fs_of_directory /sys/fs/cgroup)"
+
+    if [[ "$cgroup_dir_fs" == "$CGROUP2_ID" ]]; then
+        echo "v2"
+        return
+    elif [[ "$cgroup_dir_fs" == "$TMPFS_ID" ]]; then
+        if [[ "$(get_fs_of_directory /sys/fs/cgroup/unified)" == "$CGROUP2_ID" ]]; then
+            echo "v1 (cgroupv2systemd)"
+            return
+        fi
+        if [[ "$(get_fs_of_directory /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd)" == "$CGROUP2_ID" ]]; then
+            echo "v1 (cgroupv2systemd232)"
+            return
+        fi
+        if [[ "$(get_fs_of_directory /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd)" == "$CGROUP_ID" ]]; then
+            echo "v1"
+            return
+        fi
+    fi
+    # if we came this far despite all those returns, it means something went wrong
+    echo "failed to determine cgroup version for this system" >&2
+    exit 1
+}
+
+function check_running_containerd_tasks {
+    containerd_runtime_status_dir=/run/containerd/io.containerd.runtime.v2.task/k8s.io
+
+    # if the status dir for k8s.io namespace does not exist, there are no containers
+    # in said namespace
+    if [ ! -d $containerd_runtime_status_dir ]; then
+        echo "$containerd_runtime_status_dir does not exists - no tasks in k8s.io namespace" 
+        return 0
+    fi
+
+    # count the number of containerd tasks in the k8s.io namespace
+    num_tasks=$(ls -1 /run/containerd/io.containerd.runtime.v2.task/k8s.io/ | wc -l)
+
+    if [ "$num_tasks" -eq 0 ]; then
+        echo "no active tasks in k8s.io namespace" 
+        return 0
+    fi
+
+    echo "there are $num_tasks active tasks in the k8s.io containerd namespace - terminating"
+    return 1
+}
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/pkg/gardenlinux/scripts/kubelet_cgroup_driver.sh b/pkg/gardenlinux/scripts/kubelet_cgroup_driver.sh
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..2d0a478b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pkg/gardenlinux/scripts/kubelet_cgroup_driver.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+
+set -Eeuo pipefail
+
+source "$(dirname $0)/g_functions.sh"
+
+KUBELET_CONFIG="/var/lib/kubelet/config/kubelet"
+
+# reconfigure the kubelet to use systemd as a cgroup driver on cgroup v2 enabled systems
+function configure_kubelet {
+    desired_cgroup_driver=$1
+
+    if [ ! -s "$KUBELET_CONFIG" ]; then
+        echo "$KUBELET_CONFIG does not exist" >&2
+        return
+    fi
+
+    if [[ "$desired_cgroup_driver" == "systemd" ]]; then
+        echo "Configuring kubelet to use systemd as cgroup driver"
+        sed -i "s/cgroupDriver: cgroupfs/cgroupDriver: systemd/" "$KUBELET_CONFIG"
+    else
+        echo "Configuring kubelet to use cgroupfs as cgroup driver"
+        sed -i "s/cgroupDriver: systemd/cgroupDriver: cgroupfs/" "$KUBELET_CONFIG"
+    fi
+}
+
+# determine which cgroup driver the kubelet is currently configured with
+function get_kubelet_cgroup_driver {
+    kubelet_cgroup_driver=$(grep cgroupDriver "$KUBELET_CONFIG" | awk -F ':' '{print $2}' | sed 's/^\W//g')
+    echo "$kubelet_cgroup_driver"
+}
+
+# determine which cgroup driver containerd is using - this requires that the SystemdCgroup is in containerds
+# running config - if it has been removed from the configfile, this will fail
+function get_containerd_cgroup_driver {
+    systemd_cgroup_driver=$(containerd config dump | grep SystemdCgroup | awk -F '=' '{print $2}' | sed 's/^\W//g')
+
+    if [ "$systemd_cgroup_driver"  == "true" ]; then
+        echo systemd
+        return
+    else
+        echo cgroupfs
+        return
+    fi
+}
+
+if [ "$(get_kubelet_cgroup_driver)" != "$(get_containerd_cgroup_driver)" ]; then
+    configure_kubelet "$(get_containerd_cgroup_driver)"
+else
+    cgroup_driver=$(get_kubelet_cgroup_driver)
+    echo "kubelet and containerd are configured with the same cgroup driver ($cgroup_driver) - nothing to do"
+fi
\ No newline at end of file