• IN THE GARDEN •
• IN THE GREENHOUSES •
Writings about the garden
Location: Stockholm, Sweden • • • Visits: Continuously
(i): What more suitable botanic garden to start with, than the first one I ever visited as a child, the one run by the university that employs me, the one I stroll through during my lunchtime walks (or at least used to, when going to the office was still a thing one did). Bergius botanic garden in Stockholm. I like how the colors of Brunnsviken bay shift with the mood of the weather, and how this rubs off on the atmosphere of the garden. I like how the gardeners have created little pockets of habitats, the wetland, the meadow, the fruit garden, the flower beds around the two greenhouses. Following all the different faces of the seasons.
(ii): Maybe what I like the most in the Bergius Botanic Garden is the herb, fruit and vegetable garden. That is not a very common feature in botanic garden contexts, the cultivated and non-ornamental. Showing the plants that we rely on for sustenance and that might be the clearest examples of what can come out of the social-ecological interdependencies that we as humans have created. Allowing the useful, the cultivated be part of this museum of the living world – and not excluding it as something uninteresting or unnatural.
(iii): The separation of the “wild” and the “unnatural” has a long history, but became all the rage among the nineteenth century naturalists and conservationists. This is also a time when many botanic gardens where established, which is why I think it is so rare to find sections with cultivated, non-ornamental plants in botanic gardens. But by leaving these species out, a really important part of ecology education gets lots. The thousands of years of biodiversity development driven by human need and ingenuity, a diversity that is now fast being lost to agricultural monocultures. Botanic gardens are places where biocultural diversity could be celebrated and taught, but that is an opportunity and calling that many botanic gardens have missed. In Bergius botanic garden, though, there are tens of different varieties of strawberries, currants, apples, kale, tomatoes, potatoes, herbs. I think it is wonderful, what they have done in the orchards, vegetable and herb gardens. Stockholm University really has a botanic garden to be proud of.
(iv): During the summer months, the small Victoria greenhouse down by the water in the Bergius Botanic Garden is also open. It is tiny, completely taken up by a circular pool with Victoria water lilies, and a small selection of other tropical plants surrounding it. It is really pretty.
(v): The Edvard Anderson greenhouses in Bergius botanic garden change with the seasons. Maybe they do this in other botanic garden greenhouses as well. I wouldn’t know, as I visit most of them only once or twice. I don’t get to see the seasonal shifts. But Bergius is my home. In December, they often dress the greenhouses in a festive Christmas atmosphere. When I visited over Christmas break 2017, signs were showing and explaining the use of different Christmas-related plants: amaryllis, false Christmas cactus, cloves, ginger and cinnamon. It was all very neatly done, both pedagogical and cute. Adapted to all the happy children running around on the winding, narrow paths, allowing them to marvel at the wonders of plants.
(vi): When the sun goes down on a December afternoon, the Edvard Anderson greenhouses shine like green oases in the icy darkness. To enter the middle house, being met by the Mediterranean smells, just breathing it it. Or the moisture in the tropical house, like a caress. And the darkness outside. Sitting in the palm room, drinking tea in the dim green light, while the sky is pitch black outside. A perfect spot for solemn thoughts, a moment full of feeling.
(vii): Ordinarily, I visit the Bergius botanic garden often. Nothing the winter of 2020-21 was normal, though. But it is nice to remember. Being so close to my place of work, nice weather was generally enough to motivate taking a lunch-time or post-work stroll through it. But this also meant I rarely brought my camera. The seasons got to pass in an ever-evolving present, unrecorded by my prying camera lens.
During the final feeble breaths of 2017, though, I visited the garden several times over the course of a week together with my camera. That time of year in Stockholm, days are short and rarely sunny, so photographing is difficult. But if you are lucky, you can manage to catch the sun. And then, the clarity of that light, making the frost glitter, the crispness of the air. It is unbeatable. And the stillness of the bay under ice. At the darkest time of year, there is a tranquility to the garden that you simply do not get when it is bursting with life.
(viii): Compared to other botanic gardens, like Kew in London or Meise outside of Brussels, the Bergius garden is not big. But somehow, they have still managed to divide it into several distinctly different parts, sections with such completely different characteristics. There are the flowerbeds with garden flowers, the sections representing different more or less exotic ecosystems – but also, the recreated wetland and several meadows, that are managed, but only sparingly. They look like they are allowed to grow as they will, host the plants that happen to find their way there – and the insects and birds that thrive in this half-wilderness!
Katja Malmborg 