Life, with the garden
Location: Zürich, Switzerland • • • Visit: August 2017
I took the train from Stockholm. After many changes, a landslide-caused delay and German language confusion, I arrived in Zürich.
Not that the two days I spent in Zürich made me knowledgeable enough – but Switzerland felt like a surprisingly coherent mixture of being in the center of Europe, and being other, apart. In Zürich, where German is spoken, I was not surprised to recognize so much from southern Germany and Austria – but also, not. Maybe not being part of the European union makes it feel a bit stubborn, unbending, proud. Highly international, but without going bland.
There is no point in me going into the politics, because I don’t know enough to judge. But my spontaneous feeling about Zürich as a city was: LOVELY. I arrived in the end of a long warm summer, and the streets were full of happy, sunburned, good-looking people enjoying the picturesque alleys in the old town or the turquoise waters of the lake and river. With the mountains giving everything a feeling of being contained, protected, in our own little world of beauty. I could really see how my old friend Maija, whom I visited in London some summers ago but now had moved here, had fallen in love with the city.
And that’s really the best way to sight-see in a city: In the company of someone who really loves the place. I think she infected me with her new-love-butterflies. That, and all the cheese we ate (the Swiss really love melted cheese!), and Maija’s love-bomb dog-teddy bear Pomeranian Nala.
Of course I visited the botanic garden in Zürich too. I’ve been trying to figure it out. Where this interest comes from. My obsession with botanic gardens. I’d like to say there’s something profound about it – but maybe it’s just a type of collection. I come from a family of collectors, list-makers and chroniclers. I tick gardens off my list and I write about them. That simple satisfaction.
But I’m not sure. Maybe there’s something more. Like this thing about naming. I’ve read a couple of articles lately about how people are losing their literacy of nature. Words to name species and landscape features are disappearing from dictionaries and people’s vocabularies. I read an article by George Monbiot about the significance of words – that we construct our world with language and that how and what we choose to name limits what we care and can take action for.
I believe in the magic of words. I believe that most people care deeply – but that care mainly arises for things we know and have experienced. A nameless tree in the temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest or an anonymous succulent in the Atacama desert might be too abstract for many people to take action for. And this is where the botanic gardens can come in. A place to learn the names of exotic and strange species, be seduced by their colors and sense their scents in the air. Experiences that can inspire a little bit more care for faraway ecosystems in people who otherwise would be obliviously disconnected from them. Maybe.
I think the botanic garden in Zürich is a good place to learn care. It is small, but well kept, with winding trails across the hills and through the groves of beeches and lime-trees. The dome-shaped greenhouses were both architecturally interesting and intensely lush inside.
On the grass next to the pond, they had made a neat little arrangement with chili fruits. I had no idea chilis could come in so many different shapes and colors. Beautiful – but dangerous!
This small hill and its ponds, nice hidden corner of Zürich. Yet another commendable botanic garden to expand the parts of the world I care about.
Katja Malmborg 