A delicacy from many details – when the whole unites

Object: publicly accessible, narrow rectangular site in Kaunas Vytautas Magnus University Botanical Garden

Purpose: representative, decorative, educational – to present eight groups of soil cleaning plants

Task: to create an attractive and informative exposition of various herbaceous plants and shrubs for visitors. How to create a beautiful looking composition from weeds, vegetables, crops and herbs?

As the site is long and narrow, it was necessary to come up with an idea of how to spark peoples  curiosity to visit the other end of the site and get acquainted with all the properties of the plants that clean the soil from pollutants. After inspecting the place, the idea immediately emerged – to form a two wide elongated hills. Through them with a winding path, visitors are invited to walk through the exposition, to see thyme carpets, fescue, ryegrass, sorghum, nettles. And that invites people to see what lies on the other side of the hill. Then the visotors will be able to return to the lawns on both sides of the hills and get acquainted with hardwood, mustard, amaranth, and many other great undeservedly forgotten plants. Finally, as a visitor you can sit on a bench covering a well and admire the naturalistic compositions.

Aesthetic solutions: An assortment of plants has already been given, based on local plants of meadows, swamps, sand dunes, woodlands, with several more decorative species of beautifully flowering annual plants. Such a naturalistic assortment could be an example of the aesthetics of modern Nordic design. In this case, due to the historically romantic environment of the Botanical Garden, the abundance of herbaceous plant species is essentially reminiscent of a romantic herbarium or a sentimental grandmother’s nursery, that is fun to walk around and gaze at for an hour of free time.