The garden is his paradise and field of experimentation: Hermann Bachmaier (90) is a passionate gardener.
The 90-year-old has been sharing his knowledge at the fruit and horticultural association in Emmering for 70 years.
Emmering -
the pretty pink flowers sway gently in the late summer breeze.
“This is my reception committee,” says Hermann Bachmaier and smiles as he looks at the splendor of flowers next to his garden gate.
He pulled the flowers by the name of girl's eye himself.
The 90-year-old likes to look at the flower strips at the roadside and collect a few seeds there every now and then.
“Sometimes they open, but most of the time they don't,” he noted.
If they don't open, it's not because of the active hobby gardener - because he definitely has a green thumb, as the further walk through his garden proves.
But the plants from seed mixtures are often hybrids that cannot be reproduced - "so that you buy new seeds every year".
Hermann Bachmaier is an Emmeringen institution. For over 20 years he led a hiking group through the Amperland every week, but that is nothing compared to the record-breaking 70 years that he has now been a member of the fruit and horticultural association. There he used to make his expertise as a tree guard available to all members, and there you still rely on his keen eye for the annual cash check. “You can do an auditor until you're 100,” he jokes.
He inherited his passion for gardening from his father.
As a young boy he sent him to Bruck to attend an add-on course - it was winter and there was nothing to do on the construction site, where Bachmaier junior worked as an electrician.
In addition, in the years shortly after the end of the war, gardening was not a hobby, but a way of self-sufficiency.
“Back then, an apple was something valuable,” recalls the Emmeringer.
But he never liked the trellis trees that his father grew fanatically.
“That's against nature,” says Bachmaier.
Photos from that time show what he means.
On the façade of his parents' house on Hartstrasse, the trees stand as if nailed to the wall, the branches on the forked trellis are forced into right-angled shapes.
Dominating nature like that is something Bachmaier doesn't like.
There is no espalier fruit in his own house.
But the pensioner certainly supplies himself with berries and vegetables.
Green and yellow zucchini, Jerusalem artichoke, St. John's, prickly and josta berries thrive side by side.
He likes to put them on ready-made cake bases.
“Delicious,” enthuses the 90-year-old.
He cared for his recently deceased wife for years and developed into a househusband during this time.
For the huge zucchini weighing several kilograms in his vegetable patch, he would certainly have received a prize - earlier, when there were still fruit exhibitions in every place.
But the times are long gone.
Today the monster is only a private curiosity and seed supplier for next spring.
A zucchini of this size is not edible, says Bachmaier.
In the southern part of his garden, it blooms almost all year round. “This is my field of experimentation,” says the senior. Here he sows new flowers again and again, looks at what comes up and enjoys the blossoms of snow rose, winterling and gold lacquer, lupins and marigolds. The withered seed stalks remain in place so that the flowers can seed and bloom all the more profusely in the following year.
The father of two and grandfather of three knew long before species protection became a public issue that a garden should not be perfectly tidy.
He is particularly proud of his decade-old, but youthful-looking blue cypress hedge.
The secret: “It won't be shaved.” Instead, Hermann Bachmaier carefully cuts out all woody shoots with secateurs, three wheelbarrows full every year.
A lot of work, but what the heck.
"This is my paradise."