Which garden type are you?

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We shudder to remember the curfew three years ago, when garden centers were closed for weeks in the most beautiful spring weather. This year, people flock to the nurseries to prepare for the planting season.

But not all gardens are created equal. And gardening motivation varies from person to person. It can be said that a lot can be learned from the garden about the people behind it. A typology consisting of six parts.

Every snail has a right to exist.

Anyone with an organic garden is tolerant. Definitely, at least with a view of nature. Every insect, every grass, every snail has a right to exist. In the organic garden, the mechanisms of nature should come into play without the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

“Organic gardeners create a sanctuary for themselves and a habitat for local flora and fauna,” says Eva Puchtinger, 46, editor-in-chief of Kraut & Rüben, an organic gardening magazine.

Gardening has long been seen as a bourgeois hobby. Today’s spirit of sustainability and the ecological approach to organic gardens make gardening a stylish activity. Organic gardeners consider themselves a little wild and unusual and reflect this in their gardens. Imperfect is perfect here; wild is considered beautiful.

Nature exists to be tamed.

If you have a gravel garden, you see yourself as the controlling authority of nature: In front of the house, there is gray gravel on a mat that should prevent weeds from below, the robot turns around it in the green area with smooth lawn edges. Nothing should move and squirm here, nothing unpredictable.

Planting should be soiled as little as possible; The fence is holding neither leaves, flowers, nor blackberries. «Man determines the limit of nature; Beyond that there is no growth,” says gardener Eva Puchtinger.

As with the landscaped palace gardens of Versailles, each leaf of grass is a “symbol of discipline”, as stated in the catalog of the “Garden Futures” exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein (Germany). Puchtinger says this should be taken care of if possible. “In this type of garden, robotic lawnmowers, lounge furniture, and artistic lighting are often more important than plants. And all these status symbols must have an impact – also, and especially on visitors.”

Everything is a garden.

Urban gardeners are not the privileged ones who live in the city and are still surrounded by their own green spaces. Out of their longing for the countryside and nature, they turn the smallest (hall) room into a garden.

Anyone who sits on a wooden stool in the kitchen is sitting on hundreds of worms: the stool is compost that worms love to turn kitchen waste into high-quality humus for tomatoes, strawberries, potatoes and herbs essential to urban life. the gardener also planted several tiers. Window sill, balcony, backyard, garage roof or driveway – everything is planted here.

The fashionable variant of the “square gardener” is especially effective. Small-scale mixed cultures are planted with the square garden.

The rich crops and unusual plantings are almost reminiscent of the “planting war” of WWII, when people were called upon to arm themselves with garden tools from 1940 to improve food security in the country. At that time, even potatoes were harvested in the square in front of the Zurich Opera House and in front of the Parliament House in Bern.

The most beautiful trio comes from nature.

The cottage garden was once indispensable for the self-sufficiency of the farming family. Today, labor-intensive gardening has become more of a hobby, even for the farmer’s wife, but he has a growing fan base outside of the farming community. There are numerous instructions on how to create and plant a summer cottage garden.

Traditionally, only care-free or not only beautiful, but also useful flowers are allowed to remain. “A farmer’s wife didn’t have time for anything else,” says garden expert Eva Puchtinger.

Important elements in the cottage garden are a fenced area, a clear layout structure, planting areas separated by small paths – the garden provides the most beautiful trio, namely vegetables, medicinal and aromatic plants for self-sufficiency, as well as flowers. for flower decoration of the house.

A greener city is more livable.

Their habitat is the city and they act with a watchful eye. Here the guerrilla gardener discovers a disk of trees on which neither poppy nor hibiscus is sprouting, there the guerrilla gardener finds a sad traffic island without greenery. Their actions are secret, their weapon is a bomb – a seed bomb that they drop unnoticed or throw in an inaccessible place. Civil disobedience in the public sphere.

As the “Garden Futures” exhibit shows, guerrilla gardening in New York City dates back to the late 1960s, when the poorer segments of the population had virtually no green space at their disposal, while at the same time parts of the city were in a state of decay. .

The Green Guerrillas group distributed instructions on how to build and throw seed bombs. These were abandoned lands that were gradually being greened.

Today, guerrilla gardeners are well received in many places – for example, the city of Zurich actively distributed flower mixtures to the public a few years ago. This should not dampen your joy when something planted in secret grows and blooms as a mini flower meadow in the middle of buildings for the benefit of all.

Gardening changes society.

Hoeing, weeding, watering, harvesting and consuming: anything that provides personal satisfaction can also change society. Those involved in community gardening or farming projects believe it.

As Eva Puchtinger of the “Kraut & Rüben” magazine says, these people are driven by the idea that “Together we will do something and thus change the way of thinking in society”.

An example is solidarity farming, where farmers work directly with customers and members not only buy a share of the harvest but also work for free on the farm and fields for a few half days a year.

Another example is community gardens in cities: there are herb bags, boxes and raised beds in public spaces and urban wasteland, and the public is called upon to help maintain the vegetable and herb beds.

Journalist Puchtinger says: “These people are interested in actively promoting change together, whether in agriculture or urban planning.”

Source : Blick