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