Planting the steppe roundabout

We are now in the middle of the planting of the steppe roundabout with perennials from Ängsäters Perenner in the vicinity of Stockholm, Vaste plantenkwekerij Jan Spruyt in Oost-Vlaanderen in Belgium and from Rijnbeek en Zoon in Boskoop in Netherlands.

First I walk around and drop the plants on place all over the site, following my planting plan and even more my intuition at that certain moment. As I work very much on mode and feeling when I create a biotope planting I always modify the original plan a lot. To be honest I don't even have a true planting plan, but of course I can't inform my clients about that. In that case I would probably not get any missions at all...

Anyhow, the result will be marvelous! Here are some of the plants used in the steppe planting listed.

Achillea filipendulina

Achnatherum calamagrostis

Allium schoenoprasum

Aster amellus

Dianthus carthusianorum

Eremurus stenophyllus

Geranium sanguineum
Geranium 'Tiny Monster'

Melica ciliata

Paradisea liliastrum

Pennisetum orientale

Perovskia atriplicifolia

Phlomis russeliana
Prunella grandiflora
Sedum acre 

Stipa barbata

Stipa pennata

Stipa ucrainica

Before the planting started

The arrival of the plants

First the perennials are dropped on place in patterns 

The planting starts

Solitude standing

Yesterday the one and only pine tree, a big Pinus nigra, from Bruns in Germany was planted in the roundabout. All the rocks have also been placed out already so now we are only waiting for the perennials to arrive. Next week the planting will start.  

The first rocks are here

The largest rock is a 5 ton piece of lime stone

Today 13 big boulders came to the roundabout. We directly started to place them out and will continue with that tomorrow. Now I hardly can't wait to get them all on site, so we soon can start with the planting. The solitude tree, a big Pinus nigra, will arrive early next week.

This rock is here turned upside down for best exposure

The Home Town Steppe Roundabout

Late spring snow? No, just chalky sand!  

“No prophet is accepted in his own town” as the modified old Luke saying says. Until now it has been the veracity as I haven’t had any landscape project in my own home town Lund here in the south of Sweden, no, not even a single planting so far.

However now at last I got the mission by the Lund municipality to turn a big roundabout and two traffic islands into a dry calcareous flowering steppe, planted with a wide range of lime loving plants, all originated from Eurasia.

The chalk layer in the roundabout

The preparing has already started. First the former lawn was removed and then a layer of about 10 cm of macadam was spread out all over the soil. Next step was to add about 20 cm of a whitish chalk in the size 0,2-2,0 mm, from Ignaberga. The last top layer consists of about 15-20 cm of calcareous macadam, 0-25 mm, from Falköping.

Next week some big rocks and boulders are going to be placed out at strategic places in the roundabout, companied by smaller but still big stones.

In the Easter week we so will plant the roundabout with many different perennials and grasses. I’ll of course come back here to report about the result after finished planting.

Now the last layer of calcareous gravel is placed out

Wonderful trunk design

Later this year both the Wild Forest and the Foggy Forest will be created in the city park of Laholm. For that purpose I yesterday visited Laholm and my aim this time was to find suitable trunks of old trees to "decorate" the park with. Together with the city gardener Stefan Persson and his staff I went to a local wood artist in Ränneslöv.

The artist's garden appeared to be a gorgeous place on Earth! It was literally crowded with wonderful old logs and other big wooden parts from a wide range of tree species and in different stages ot decay.

Here we later will pick out wood for the construction of a Nature Tower in the Wild Forest and chiefly find big trunks to dig down into the ground or even just drop around in the future forests as dead wooden monuments. Close to the trunks it will be planted climbing plants as Schizophragma, Schisandra and Celastrus.

The dead wood is very important for many different species of insects as discussed earlier on this blog, see Living dead wood from February. The wood will be an appreciated playground for many larvae inside the trunks and of great pleasure for woodpeckers hunting them from the outside.

The artist Anders Ölund and his storage of wood in the small village of Ränneslöv 

Eventually the spring arrived

Suddenly the weather changed from cold and harsh, grim and gloomy into a wonderful, sunny and delightful spring day with temperatures above even 15 degrees Celsius. Today the spring arrived to Alnarp for real.

All the early spring flowers were just waiting for this holy moment and they started rapidly with no delay to emerge from bulbs and tubers. Some of them were of course already up over the ground before just to look around and they now quickly opened their perianths as fully as possibly.

Leucojum vernum prefers moist sites in semi shade

Eranthis hiemalis is showing all intimate parts they have without any trace of timidity 

Crocus tommasinianus belongs to the earliest in the genus to appear

The Hamamelis cultivars have already been flowering for some time

The Mediterranean World in Alnarp

Camellia in one of the greenhouses

The students at the course Indoor Garden Design at the University in Alnarp in southern Sweden have three small greenhouses as laboratory units for their studies in plant knowledge and design. As the Mediterranean world has a tremendous amount of interesting and useful plants for city spaces under glass, the students has a huge range of plants to learn about and to chose from for their indoor garden design projects.  

Here the students are making the green plant wall more complete. They are planting Selaginella, Saxifraga stolonifera and other plants in the empty pockets of the wall cover.  Pest control is made by releasing predators in the greenhouses. Checking leaves to identify insects and mites is an important task.