BUGA 2001 Potsdam: National Horticulture Exposition

In contrast to events like the Chelsea Flower Show, which concentrate on individual displays and practical information for home gardeners, the BUGA is a large-scale landscape-architecture exercise which often involves the creation of major new parks or other ambitious changes in an urban landscape. Its location changes each time. Thus the decentralised approach of the Potsdam BUGA responds to a variety of perceived needs in this historic city, a mere 30km from Berlin yet almost unknown to western visitors until the reunification of Germany.

The old city centre will receive a dose of green in the form of newly planted allees and the planting of existing courtyards. The range of measures includes the recovery of neglected parklands like the Hegelallee, which fell victim to car parking in the postwar decades but has been converted back into a quiet promenade. New departures are also being made, however, in opening up previously inaccessible stretches of the city's many shorelines (on lakes, rivers and canals) and introducing a modern interpretation of the Platz der Einheit (Unity Square). Lest it seem that all this reworking of the urban fabric throws purely horticultural concerns into the shadows, it's worth noting that the latter come into play in such areas as the Freundshaftsinsel (Friendship Island), where the many plant varieties introduced by the island's original 1930s designer, Karl Foerster, will feature in the effort to return the island to the glories of his day.

Lots of plants useful to the hobby gardener will also be on show in the second main display area, the BUGA-Park in the Bornstedter Feld, an area north of the city centre which has been given over to military uses for centuries. Here rhodedendrons and roses are joined by exhibits on themes such as health gardens, trees and bushes and graveside plantings (cemeteries being among the most intensively and lovingly landscaped spaces in any German city). Continuing the practice of reconciling old and new, the design of the BUGA-Park (60 hectares of which will remain after the close of the Exposition as a permanent city park) uses the six-metre-high military walls as outlook points to open up vistas over the new park toward the city's existing monuments and green spaces. The Biosphere Hall in the BUGA-Park adds to this what, for many visitors, is the highlight of each BUGA show: a changing series of 20 thematic flower and plant exhibitions under glass

The last section of the park is the Feldflur (arable plot), a tract of land northwest of the city centre originally laid out in 1842 by Peter Joseph Lenné (1789-1866). Lenné was the master landscape architect responsible for most of the redesign and expansion of the parks around Potsdam in the mid-19th century. The Feldflur served as a sort of home farm for the royal estate in the Prussian seat and the BUGA plan seeks to revive 65 hectares of this landscape under the theme 'A Meadow for the Eye'. This will include measures from replanting deteriorating allees to adding colour to the pastures which form the heart of the plan. The idea is to recreate an agricultural landscape in which cattle, sheep, goats, horses and swine can feel at home. This is the first time that agricultural terrain has been integrated into the BUGA and the organisers couldn't resist a spot of high-tech: while some of the beasts graze contentedly, tiny video cameras mounted in their horns will transmit pictures to visitors situated at a distance!

As the reference to Lenné suggests, Potsdam, with its enormous parklands, offers the visitor one of the most capitivating garden landscapes in the world. Lenné's work in the park of Sansouci, the Neuer Garten, the Pfaueninsel (Swan Island) and along the River Havel built on the ambitious Baroque plans of the 17th century. In close harmony with the building works of architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1844), Lenné's gardens achieved a neoclassical synthesis lusher and less severe than, for instance, that at Versailles. The palaces and art collections at Potsdam are also world-class. Indeed, a visitor could easily spend two days at the BUGA and several more exploring the rest of Potsdam, without even scratching the surface of Berlin, only 30 minutes away by rail.