HORTICULTURE AND LANDSCAPE IN NATURAL STONE IN GERMANY

Gesa Todt

The Germans are conservative people who are rooted in the soil, but they are always ready to apply new tendencies all over the country. This can also be seen in the manner how horticulture and landscape forming is done nowadays.

Everything must be very natural and the garden or the park must be long-lasting and easy to cultivate, for employing people is expensive in Germany and few have any time at all.

The enormously growing importance of the use of natural stone in Germany in horticulture and landscape forming in recent times is illustrated by many activities. Schools are equipped with lovely yards having imaginative corners, fountains and step arrangements made of coarsely cut ashlars.

Public buildings are decorated with beds including stone as an essential element. Even in private gardens natural stone enjoys increasing popularity, either in the form of paths made of exquisite slabs, in the form of walls andslopes for landscape structuring or in the form of individual stones as a natural work of art.

Planning and Execution by One Hand

The German natural stone industry has started to exploit this gap in the market. More and more companies do not only offer material and the execution of the work but their marketing technique is rather comprehensive planning and consulting "by one hand". At least private customers are not willing to commission an architect just to design their garden. They have certain ideas and would like them to be carried out professionally, and that means quickly and unexpensively. As public projects usually are more extensive, the authorities employ landscape architects and engineers, who also like to use the comprehensive offers from the natural stone companies.

School Gardens as Advertising Media

The company Franken Schotter, south of Nuremberg detected, among others, school gardens as presentation objects. Public authorities, which never have sufficient resources, rarely have money to spend for the exterior of schools, especially not for renovation or restoration. Franken Schotter, however, early recognized that horticulture and landscape forming are an important pillar of natural stone industry, and that their importance is even increasing. Although horticulture and landscape forming have been offered by the company only recently, they already account for 25 % of the total turnover.

The Company sold approximately 20,000 tons of bricks, facing bricks, erratic boulders and other structuring stones in 1998. And that is how the company uses the poverty of the local governments for marketing purposes: together with teachers, pupils and parents they plan and carry out school gardens and yards with tremendous advertising effects. In return, they sell the material at a considerably lower price to the schools. Not only do they build retaining walls, atria with stone steps or fountains, but also natural rock gardens, which are quickly populated by reptiles and insects and thus are even useful for didactic purposes.

Old Stones Seen in a Different Light

A completely different but nevertheless beautiful example can be found in the current Federal Garden Exposition in Magdeburg (in former East Germany).

They made a virtue out of necessity and separated the individual areas of the exposition by retaining walls made of rough stone. In a nice way they combined old bricks from the debris of restoration works in Magdeburg with surplus or especially made granite ashlars and other stony material. This results in timeless beauty and additionally keeps up the memory of the town's history.

Historic Material

The company TRACO is also located in former East Germany (Niederdorla/Thuringia) and working with traditional materials of the region. They take extremely long-lasting material from an old Muschelkalk quarry, which meets the climatic requirements of Central Europe and which has been exploited there for hundreds of years.

Classical buildings such as the Berlin Pergamon Museum were made of this stone, thus proving its durability. Quarries close to Weimar and the spa Bad Langensalza supplied travertine, which was extremely popular in Goethe's times, but which also influenced Bauhaus architecture. Seeberger sandstone, which is found close to Gotha, has already been used in the Middle Ages, e.g. for building the famous Wartburg castle. All three quarries have been revived by TRACO and are now exploited intensively also for horticulture and landscape forming. Here the application of Muschelkalk, travertine and sandstone is extremely sensible for building paths and steps due to their slip resistance in the case of frost and their high durability against salt. The warm colours match well with nature and support the natural tendency, which marks German gardens and parks nowadays (after many years of conifers, pruned hedges and English lawns). Unimaginative garden fences are replaced by capstans, palisades and low walls made of natural stone with colourful shrub vegetation.

Decorations

Fountains are very popular for decoration purposes. Here again private people noticed the soothing effects of splashing water, so that big and small basins with artistically manufactured water sources have become more and more widespread. These gardens are complemented harmonically by places with tables and benches made of natural stone. They are easy to clean and they do not have to be removed in the cold German winter.

Only recently one has started again to decorate representative buildings as well as private gardens with sculptures. After many years during which mainly kitschy figures were liked only by a small circle of fans, now mostly naturalistic or even stylistic representations of mainly exotic animals of all sizes are sold. This is especially caused by relatively low prices, which are only possible due to (often dubious) manufacturing methods in countries of the Third World.

Those who like more unique objects may choose erratic boulders. Here not only regional material is used but raw stones are also brought from foreign countries to Germany. Corona Marble company in Kavala (Greece) has already found many customers by selling moonstones and Meteora rocks, which have been structured artistically through millennia of weather effects. Especially in this field imitation is widespread: if a garden is decorated with erratic boulders, very soon the neighbours will also acquire a taste for it.

Change of Generations

Considering the German population structure, it becomes obvious that not only the tendency towards the possession of an own house and garden has not stopped, but presently a generation of heirs has sufficient money to renovate their parents' houses according to their taste and to design even the garden individually with large scale investments. This tendency will certainly go on for a long time, thus offering great sales potential to the natural stone industry. And as coloured stone in the internal area has found a market all over the world, the demand for exclusiveness will create many a new fashion in the external area.

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Last Updated: July 2008