Webinar: 10th of January 2023, 09:30 – 15:30 (GMT+01:00)
Practical workshop: 5th and 6th of September 2023, in Germany.
Imagine a landscape park without trees – impossible. Trees are important design elements and give parks and gardens structure. Trees have direct benefits for the site, the other plants and the people, e.g. by giving shade or enhancing the air quality. While trees needed limited care for many decades, many of them are for some years now a cause for concern or have already become patients in garden maintenance. Climate change with high temperatures, very low rainfall, sinking ground water levels or increasing storm events etc. has rapidly increased diseases and deaths of many trees – often the very old and the monument characteristic ones.
Schloss Dyck Photo: EGHN
An all-day winter-webinar will be arranged 10th of January 2023, followed by a practical workshop in September (5th – 6th – 2023). The aim of the webinar and the workshop is to find solutions for the conservation, development and maintenance of trees in historical gardens in times of climate change based on historical methods and experiences as well as on recent research and professional exchange.
Webinar
The webinar will cover these topics: Importance of trees for the cultural heritage of our parks and gardens in different epochs; Historical cultivation, planting and care techniques in the design with trees; Challenges in dealing with trees in climate change; Practical solutions in the development, management and maintenance of trees; International conservation charters and national legislation that exist to safeguard heritage gardens. It will also be shown that heritage parks can have an important role in identifying and creating resilient heritage park maintain both the natural and heritage values.
The speakers at the webinar are:
Philipp Sattler, Initiative Alliance Historical Gardens in Climate Change
Prof. Dr. Norbert Kühn, Technical University Berlin, Vegetation Technology and Plant Use
Dr. Henrik Sjöman, Swedish University of Agricultural Science and Curator at Gothenburg Botanical Garden
Jens Spanjer, Schloss Dyck Foundation
Dr. Meike Kirscht, Palaces and Gardens Baden-Württemberg
Kerstin Abicht, Lorenz von Ehren Nursery
Simon Toomer, Curator for Living Collections at Kew Gardens
See the program for more information about the content.
Veteran tree at Schloss Dyck Photo: Anne Stine Solberg
Workshop
The workshop will be held in the English landscape park and the gardens of Schloss Dyck (Jüchen, close to Düsseldorf and Cologne) where due to the historical plant collection possibilities for implementing practical work are given. Since 2004, Schloss Dyck Foundation is organizing annual workshops on tree care. The inclusion of expert knowledge on how to deal with the effects of climate change on trees has been very successful over the last few years. Hosting the workshop, they will be able to invite experts from a number of historic gardens as Schloss Dyck Foundation is a founding member in the “Initiative Alliance Historic Gardens in Climate Change” in Germany.
As the hosting partners, EGHN and Schloss Dyck Foundation are working with the program for the workshop. During the two days, the participants will be introduced for several subtopics relevant for Trees in Historic Gardens in Climate Change:
Mapping: How to use modern system of digital recording of the tree population in the park for understanding the historical intentions and development of the tree population.
Tree inspection: How to examine the population of individual veteran trees and damaged trees.
Reinforcement and revitalization: When and how to vitalize the the sensitive tree population.
Practical tree maintenance: Using visual analysis of the trees to help understand its condition for finding maintenance strategies.
Plantings under trees: Improving site conditions by planting vegetation under veteran trees.
