Change gardens: tips for your blooming natural oasis!

Change gardens: tips for your blooming natural oasis!

On Tuesday, February 11, 2025, a lecture with the title "Gardens in Change" will take place at 7 p.m. in the Volkshochschule (VHS) Speyer, Villa Ecarius. The consultant of the evening is Christiane Hilsendegen, who has held the lead of the stork center in Bornheim for over a decade until the beginning of 2019. Your lecture aims to give the participants suggestions and tips on how to create a natural oasis in your own gardens.

The focus will be on the use of local wild plants, as well as the creation of special structures that contribute to promoting biodiversity. Hilsendegen wants to make the garden design easier with a modular principle. In doing so, she will also present rules and advice that should help the garden owners save time in caring for their gardens. Participation in this free lecture requires a registration that can be made on the website of the VHS Speyer, www.vhs-speyer.de .

collaboration with local initiatives

The lecture is organized in cooperation with the Bieneninitiative Speyer and the BUND for the Environment and Nature Conservation Germany (BUND). This partnership emphasizes the concern to promote awareness of natural garden practices and thus contribute to the increase in biodiversity. Similar projects for promoting biodiversity and natural garden design are also carried out in other regions of Germany, for example as part of a research project in Gütersloh and Aumühle.

The project that is carried out there includes workshops to record and improve the level of knowledge of the garden owners. These should not only collect information, but also serve as real laboratories to analyze the existing biodiversity in gardens. The aim is to create a comparison size in order to be able to measure improvements during the project.

challenges and solutions

A central concern of the workshops and projects is to identify possible obstacles to nature -related garden design. These range from personal preferences for certain garden aesthetic to financial aspects or the missing green thumb. In the course of the next phases of the project that start in autumn and spring 2023, a guide for hobby gardeners and municipalities will be created. This is intended to provide specific information on the species -friendly design of gardens and green areas.

A package of measures to promote biodiversity could also expand the knowledge of the influence of garden design on the environment and initiate ecological rethinking among the population. Healthy plants, adapted to your location, show higher resistance to diseases and climate changes and help to stabilize the balance in the garden. Garden owners, who do not actively participate in such projects, can also contribute to biodiversity through the purchase of domestic wild plants, such as the league or cornelian cherry.

The use of wild perennials, such as the wild Malve or the meadow marches, in natural gardens as well as the selection of plants with unfilled flowers, which offer more pollen and nectar for insects, are valuable tips for promoting biodiversity. For a continuous habitat for insects and animals, there should be at least one flowering plant throughout the season to ensure its food supply. All of this illustrates the importance of the upcoming event and provides important incentives to care for nature, which are dealt with in the lecture.