dutch | A Gardener's Notebook

‘Every tree counts’: Dutch come up with cunning way to create forests for free | Trees and forests | The Guardian

In a clearing in the Amsterdamse Bos, a forest on the outskirts of the Dutch capital, is a “tree hub” where hundreds of saplings, among them hazelnut, sweet cherry, field maple, beech, chestnut and ash, are organised by type.

The idea behind it is simple: every day unwanted tree saplings were being cleared and thrown away when those young trees could be carefully collected and transplanted to where they are wanted.

Volunteers have already collected thousands of saplings cleared from woodland paths and those unlikely to survive in the forest shade. On Saturday, on donate a seedling day, people will be encouraged to take unwanted saplings or cuttings from their own gardens and give them to 200 tree hub locations across the Netherlands.

Read ‘Every tree counts’: Dutch come up with cunning way to create forests for free | Trees and forests | The Guardian

Required Reading: Gardens Under Big Skies—Reimagining Outdoor Space, the Dutch Way – Gardenista

When we think of the Dutch landscape, water and flatness come to mind—a scene so “monotonous” that British writer Noel Kingsbury used to complain to Holland’s garden superstar Piet Oudolf that it was impossible not to get lost. “Learning to read the landscape takes time,” says Oudolf in the foreword to this erudite and fascinating new book, “and not all visitors are prepared to do that.”

Gardens Under Big Skies, published by Filbert Press, lavishly illustrates that the devil is in the detail: Dutch gardening is distinguished by “its clarity of form and its desire to embrace the contemporary,” in the words of co-author and photographer Maayke de Ridder. The low-lying landscape (about a third of which is below sea level) is key to the rigorously forward-thinking garden scene in the Netherlands.

Read Required Reading: Gardens Under Big Skies—Reimagining Outdoor Space, the Dutch Way – Gardenista

A Gardener's Notebook

Come and join me in my garden!

Tag Archives: dutch

‘Every tree counts’: Dutch come up with cunning way to create forests for free | Trees and forests via The Guardian [Shared]

Required Reading: Gardens Under Big Skies—Reimagining Outdoor Space, the Dutch Way via Gardenista [Shared]

Related posts:

Related posts: