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A group of students took part in the first Westphalian park maintenance seminar on 24 and 25 February 2018 with Dr Roswitha Kirsch-Stracke. Together with colleagues from the LWL Monument Preservation, Landscape and Building Culture, the Jugendbauhütte Westfalen of the Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz (German Foundation for Monument Protection) and many volunteers from the region, important sight lines were cleared around the moated castle of Senden and bushes were removed that had spread uncontrollably over the last 20 years. During the practical work, the students learned, for example, about the root growth of the snowberry (Symphoricarpos spec.), whose dense stands had to be cleared. How quickly ash seedlings become stately trees and that the wood of the copper beech weighs twice as much as that of the weeping willow became physically tangible during the felling, limbing and sawing of the trees and the stacking of wood.
Landscape architect Elke Lorenz from Düsseldorf presented the park maintenance plan with its individual steps in the theory block and also addressed the need for further investigation during the subsequent discussion. For example, the participants were currently able to identify the flowering snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis) in many places in the park as a pointer to old garden culture (stinkweed), but it is still unknown whether others are present in the park.
Marcus Weiß (LWL), initiator of the park maintenance seminar, used numerous examples during the concluding tour to explain how necessary it always is to consider individual cases in (garden) monument maintenance instead of general recommendations.
The students' conclusion: They will definitely participate again in the next park maintenance seminar!
