The last garden of Ulla Molin

A narrow path through the ivy

Ulla Molin was a trendsetting Swedish designer of small gardens and outdoor spaces. She used a very chaste and strict style with some few distinct plants and often ground covers arranged in big irregular, settled blocks. Among her favorite plants we can find Antennaria, Asarum, Hedera, Buxus and ferns.

This week our students at the garden design course in Alnarp made an excursion to Lund with the aim to study private gardens and the last garden made by Ulla Molin was one of them. In the yard there are a couple of apartment blocks with different small garden spaces. In one of them we found pruned box globes planted directly in the gravel or in elevated concrete cylinders. She has created a unique spatiality in the yard by using very few expressions. “Great design”, the students thought.

Box globes in the garden of Ulla Molin

The entrance to the garden with post boxes on the wall

The small woodland in Tim's garden 

The first private garden to visit this day was the garden of Tim Delshammar and his family. Tim who is a landscape architect working as a teacher in Alnarp has made a nice little garden divided into small rooms by hedges and fences. Just behind the front garden it is a small woodland with globes of box and privet. The ground is covered by Asarum, Brunnera, Epimedium, Pulmonaria, ferns and bulbs. The influence from Ulla Molin is obvious. 

Inside the garden of Lotte Möller

As a great final of the day we visited the garden of the author and garden writer Lotte Möller. She has through the years made a wonderful, wild and peaceful garden in central Lund. Some of the plants she just allow to grow anywhere in the garden if they can find a place to root by themselves. But despite the garden looks like it was left to grow entirely by its own, it is on the contrary actually carefully maintained and finely attended.   

A paradise in Lund - the natural garden of Lotte Möller