Sunday 3 April 2011

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

6 comments:

  1. I am wondering about the 'macadam'? To me that says tarred, like the road surface. But in the last picture it seems you mean gravel?

    I will be fascinated to see the rocks, and then the plants.

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  2. It is gravel, but made from crushed rocks. Here we use the word gravel for natural stones and fragments and macadam if it is man made.

    I'll publish further pictures, don't worry!

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  3. So your gravel would be rounded? What I would call pebbles in various sizes?

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  4. Hmm, maybe I am wrong. Actually the mineral fractions we use are not called macadam I found out the other day. In macadam there shouldn't be anything of the smallest fractions, no zero fractions. So maybe gravel still is the correct word in English for the crushed material we use. In Swedish it is named “kross” meaning crushed material.

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  5. Hej Peter. Som jag har undrat vad de håller på med i rondellen. Passerar minst 2 ggr per dag ;) Nu vet jag. Kommer att bli kanonsnyggt, stenblocken är finfina! Var liiite orolig när de började schakta att vi skulle få mer plastgräs, hu!
    Lycka till, jag stannar till nån dag när ni börjat plantera.
    MVH
    Anette

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  6. Hej Anette!
    Nej inget plastgräs här inte. Du är välkommen förbi i påskveckan när vi ska plantera, men det blir inga dagliljor där förstås.

    Fast vi ska direktså paradislilja, Paradisea liliastrum. Inte så dumt det heller.

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