0 Swissinnovation - Travels in Mittleuropa part 4

Experimental 'perennial hedge'

       Lots of good things happen at Hochschule Wädenswil. The ‘integrated planting system’ for one, which aims at making randomised mixes of perennials and bulbs, and annuals for the first two years, and some other ‘mixed planting’ systems where again the emphasis is on choosing plants compatible with the site, and each other and then randomising them. Works well in slabs rather than conventional borders. And they are trialling a ‘perennial hedge’ too, with Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ as the main element, oddly flowering component not randomised, but interesting idea – more of a summer-autumn screen planting than a hedge. I’ve always thought tallish perennials work well as shallow screen type plantings.

Doris, maestra of the urban annual mix

            They have also started working with annual mixes, using them on sites left temporarily vacant in the constant rebuilding which seems to afflict Zürich. Public love them. They work here as the country gets quite high summer rainfall (which I remember only too well from childhood holidays); stress annuals with low soil moisture, and they go into seed-production mode and an early death, a trajectory difficult to stop, but keep them moist and many will flower all summer. Annual mixes don’ t work in eastern Austria or further east as the summer is too dry and they will all be dead by the end of July.

Doris Tausendpfund who designs the annual mixes (and the very promising looking perennial mixes) describes how she sees the mixes working on two levels – one colour dominates from the distance, perhaps as you drive by in your car, but then if you stop and look more closely, like whilst waiting for the tram, you see that there are many other colours.

Climbing plants in containers in Basel (Hochbergerstr.)

On the subject of building sites, it never ceases to amaze me how much the Swiss love cement, in fact the smell of wet cement always reminds me, in a really Proustian way, of Switzerland, as I spent several months here as a child and the frenetic building with cement clearly impacted the hard-wiring of the scent bit of my brain. Perhaps all this rather unsustainable use of cement is one reason for the counter-reaction, that the country is the world leader in green architecture and engineering; green roofs are everywhere, climbers are used to dramatic effect on buildings, whilst slope stabilisation using plants is increasingly seen, or actually not seen, as it is a lot less obvious than great concrete bastions or gabions.

            Whilst I’m having a moan about my recent dear hosts, it also never ceases to amaze me how much the Swiss smoke. Like the proverbial chimneys, so unless you have an alp to yourself you can forget about the pure mountain air. Although, smoking in restaurants has finally been made Verboten. Putting two things together, perhaps the country should be symbolised note by the alpenhorn, the Emmentaler cheese or the Swiss army knife but a re-inforced concrete ashtray.

           

Detail: Swissinnovation - Travels in Mittleuropa part 4

0 What do you do when the Schau is over? Travels in Mitteleuropa part 3.

     What happens when the last Stein has been drunk, the last leaflet on bio-dynamic slug control handed out and the last Tagetes wilts in autumn's first frost?        
     Gardenshows are a big part of the German garden scene, lasting all summer and (key thing this) leaving behind the legacy of a regenerated urban space. Many of the best parks are former Gartenschau sites. We tried it in Britain during the Thatcherreich but no attempt was ever made to keep them as public spaces, and in the sad case of Liverpool, the show site is now quite well-known for its grafitti daubed ruined Chinese garden.

Playground - durability all right! Had to stop myself running up it.

            How you turn a one-summer event into something permanent is a challenge, one which has apparently been met pretty well here. Of course I tend to visit the successful ones, but I have seen places with  artworks that look like beached whales, avenues which go nowhere, and perennial borders run amok. A couple of days ago I dropped in on a 2004 Bavaria State show at Burghausen. On the whole a successful transformation, 8 out of 10, I think Herr  (or Frau) Burgermeister. One series of perennial borders pretty well abandoned – why not just replace with ground cover? and some strange objects which could only be artworks, but a fantastic children’s playground – the kind of really inventive place which can be one of the best features of these events, overall a good urban green space, and a whole series of little gardens between beech hedges – nice intimate spaces (assuming the good folk of Burghausen don’t go in for too much spliff-rolling or needle-based activities, which is always a problem if you create too much quiet space in urban parks). These were all designed by design practices, a bit like Chelsea Flower Show gardens, but permanent. Some looked really good, the others … well, I am sure the designers would be horrified if they could see their names attached. There is always a real problem with these individual gardens in places where they become permanent and get maintained by the same staff – they all sink to a common level. On the whole though they make for garden vignettes you would never get normally in a public park.

Panicum virgatum grass with Aster dumosus at Weihenstephan

            Quick visit to Weihenstephan, home to the world’s leading collection of perennials, meet the new prof. of planting design, Swantje Duthweiler, whose interest in early 20^th century planting styles heralds the prospect of some interesting new takes on plant use (watch this space?).

            Now in Switzerland where I have spent a fascinating day at Hochschule Wädenswil, a teaching and research centre in canton Zürich. They have done a lot of work on perennial mixtures – randomized combinations of plants for particular visual effects or management techniques, sometimes just perennials, but sometimes including bulbs and annuals too. Some very high tech means of teaching plant ID too – you use an iPhone app. to zap a code on a pillar and your phone downloads a plant list, plant information and other stuff about the planting; meanwhile some nicely designed little leaflets give you plants lists too.

Most stunning of all though are the vertical gardens they are working on for indoor environments, including some wonderful ‘plant pictures’, exploiting the fact that a lot of tropicals perform well when growing vertically.

            A lot of fruit growing happens at Wädenswil too – it has a mild climate, being on Lake Zürich; some fascinating unusual fruit here too. Actinidia arguta makes tiny sweet little Kiwi fruit – much nicer than the normal kind, and I never realised you can eat Schisandra chinensis berries – although to be honest the flavour made me think of what it would be like if you bit into a chunk of incense – a challenge for the truly innovative cook perhaps.

            Odd how in the German- speaking world, it is public horticulture  which is where innovation happens, and private gardens are relatively unsophisticated - mirror image of back home. Our nearly all having private gardens (in the UK) has meant, sadly, a lack of political pressure for quality public space. But given the very different agendas of private and public gardening, there is so much scope for cross-fertilisation of ideas.

Detail: What do you do when the Schau is over? Travels in Mitteleuropa part 3.