If you can't travel, the vacation spot has to come to you. A trendy garden style - that of naturalistic green - can do that. It brings the high mountains or the steppe home with you.
Weinheim (dpa / tmn) - The garden is actually just the green living room in front of the house. But in times of restricted freedom of movement, it can be more: a holiday and longing place. It can also be designed in this way - with planting that could also occur in nature worldwide.
Small alpine rock areas are reproduced with a garden wall, a shady bed with large-leaved plants plays with the feeling of hiking through a rainforest. And colorful blooming prairie designs awaken the desire for freedom and adventure in the American style.
This trend towards naturalistic garden style has not only existed since the pandemic. Prof. Cassian Schmidt, head of the Hermannshof show and sighting garden in Weinheim, recognizes a social mindset in this. "Humans see nature at risk, so they give it more space in the garden," he says.
In addition, for Sven Nürnberger, master gardener in the Frankfurt palm garden and author, there is the development in many places of the reduction in living space and the noticeable interference by agriculture in nature. "People want to repeat what is lost - and so you try to counter species extinction by promoting diversity in the garden," he says.
Exotic plants for the garden
But what exactly is this about? Many gardens with their accurate lawn and colorful plants have little to do with nature. And the naturalistic design approach is also not about replicating your own nature on your doorstep with native plants - for example, by creating a meadow instead of the English lawn.
The naturalistic garden makes use of the repertoire of exotic, non-native plants. "You get inspiration from nature," says Prof. Schmidt. And creatively creates garden pictures of foreign places - in an "exaggerated, aesthetic form". Or as the Nuremberg expert puts it: the naturalistic style is a kind of controlled nature.
As an example, the expert Schmidt gives a steppe landscape: "It lives on grasses, the panicles of the sage and the flat umbrella-shaped inflorescences of the yarrow."
These typical plants are loosely distributed over the area according to the chaos principle, without individual species appearing as a larger group or in a regular pattern. This creates a planting in three layers: "High scaffolders, medium-high filling plants and flat ground cover are the basis for diversity," explains Prof. Schmidt.
A natural stone staircase with alpine plants
An alternative is the landscape of the alpine high mountains: For example, you can use a natural stone staircase in the garden as a basis and plant it with upholstery and rosette plants from this area, suggests Nürnberger.
Important: For this you not only take real wild forms of plants, but also robust and exquisite varieties that have retained their natural character. Since not the entire nature of a place is reproduced, but only excerpts, one can also "combine different garden styles and sometimes only take out individual vegetation sections", author Nürnberger explains.
The garden for intelligent lazy people
And when everything is planted, let it go - and observe the development of the plants in their natural way. The community of plants has its own dynamic. You have to learn to take little control and to accept a natural interaction of the structures.
"The naturalistic garden is ideal for intelligent lazy people - with the emphasis on the adjective," says Prof. Schmidt, referring to a quote from the well-known garden philosopher and perennial breeder Karl Foerster (1874-1970).
