Image courtesy of Malgorzata Dudek-Grzegorzewska
Four years ago I was asked to do a workshop for Zarzad Zieleni, the Warsaw City Green Space Department. It all seemed to go very well, thanks to a dear friend, Malgosia Kiedzrynska, who is a highly proficient interpreter – working with Malgosia is almost like having a Polish alter ego. It is always difficult however to really know how much impact one is having.
Returning however, it is wonderful to see perennial planting appearing in many of the city's roundabouts and other high visibility roadside locations. I was able to spend a morning driving around the city looking at plantings, and a day and half providing some educational input. I felt very honoured at having been involved in making such a transformation to a major city. Warsaw is in any case a very green city, in fact I don't think I know of anywhere with quite so many trees. What I particularly liked was that this was not just tidy shapely 'street trees' but so many mature, full-sized native forest species (oaks and ashes) right up close to buildings, filling courtyards as well as in some of the city's many parks.
The perennial plantings use a combination of planting techniques: both block-based and mixes. I'm nearly always in favour of mixes as there is so much resilience and ability to adapt – if one species dies out, then others can fill the gap whereas in conventional block planting, species failure tends to result in unsightly gaps. My main comments were that mixes needed to consist of more species (the highly successful German research in this area often uses 15 species per mix), and that there seemed to be some very successful and robust plants that they were not using.
We also held our first ever Garden Masterclass Polska day conference, with four speakers, myself included, chaired by Maja Popielarska, Poland's leading garden TV personality. A sister organisation to Garden Masterclass, we aim to provide online (and occasional live) educational opportunities to garden/landscape professionals and enthusiastic amateurs. Its truly exciting being involved in such a rapidly developing new gardening scene.
Warsaw is an amazingly green city with large mature trees in many city centre locations