(G2)
Letters can be from a garden, about a garden or related to the garden as a broad concept.
mail@secondgarden.xyz
17-08-2025
Kære second.garden,
En morgen i juni er jeg på vej på cykel til mit atelier i Valby. Mit blik er indstillet på at fotografere de plantearter, jeg møder på min vej. De plantearter der er trængt ind på byggepladser, op mellem fliser og ind gennem hegn. Spiret af frø der er fløjet ind fra haver og grøftekanter, eller transporteret hertil i fugleklatter og under skosåler. Arter som har fundet sig til rette i miljøer med et højt indhold af grus, byggematerialer og skarp sol.
Jeg fotograferer grønne nuancer der møder en kunstig blå langs den tungt trafikerede H.P. Knudsensvej og mælkebøtten, der overlever på et nedløbsrør.
Jeg er netop kommet fra Berlin dagen før, hvor jeg har set på vild natur i byen. Den slags natur der opstår spontant og tilfældigt af sig selv i byen, på steder der af forskellige grunde får lov at stå hen, og som der er virkelig meget af i Berlin og næsten ikke noget af i Danmark.
Da jeg drejer ud fra stien bag Folehaven og kigger ind på den byggetomt, der har ligget afspærret siden Corona - og hvor der dengang var opsat telte med testcentre - kan jeg se at lågen står åben, og at der går et par folk rundt derinde. Jeg har længe følt mig draget af stedet, fordi det er fyldt med planter, der er kommet til og er vokset op helt af sig selv. Men det høje ståltrådshegn har været låst, hver gang jeg er kommet forbi. Så dette er en unik chance for at komme derind. Jeg hopper straks af cyklen og bevæger mig ind på grunden gennem de høje planter.
“En ecological tabula rasa is an empty space which is apparently devoid of animal and plant life... and what is extremely interesting is that within a relatively short space of time seeds will simply arrive...and begin to develop a distinctive ecological assemblage.”
- Matthew Gandy, professor of geography, interview, Berlin, 2025.
På få år er en slags tilfældig have, med mange forskellige blomstrende planter, vokset op herinde. Den store sø der var opstået i vinter ser ud til at være tørret væk nu. Området står i stor kontrast til det omkringliggende Grønttorv, hvor alt er kontrolleret ned til sidste kvadratmeter. Jeg får øje på en ladcykel med planter i, og jeg går hen til ejeren, som er ved at grave en lille sommerfuglebusk op.
Det viser sig at være Laurits fra second.garden, der har planer om at genanvende planterne i et haveprojekt, og er ved at fylde en ladcykel op.
“Botanikere bruger en metode kaldet urban transect til at undersøge hvilke arter, der vokser i et bestemt område. Der går man i en lige linje gennem landskabet og undersøger hvilke planter, man møder på sin vej. Det er en videnskabelig metode som gør det muligt at sammenligne hvad vokser hvor, og hvordan det ændrer sig over tid.”
- Matthew Gandy, professor of geography, interview i Berlin, 2025.
Jeg zigzagger gennem området i jagt på de mest farverige blomster, som en bi der søger efter nektar. Jeg får en ide til at portrættere stedet filmisk. Jeg vil beskrive en intuitiv undersøgelse af landskabet. En film hvori kameraet i takt med sansernes opmærksomhed bevæger sig hen for at udforske bestemte planter, i den rækkefølge som de opdages. Et studie af den spontant opståede vilde have - en intuitiv og subjektiv version af botanikernes urban transect. Jeg må helt sikkert tilbage hertil hurtigst muligt, og inden blomsterne afblomstrer.
På vej ud aftaler jeg med Laurits med ladcyklen, at vi må holde forbindelsen på grund af vores fælles passion for den vilde bynatur. Super inspireret af mit besøg her, cykler jeg videre fast besluttet på at tage herhen med filmudstyr den følgende uge.
Ugen går og den følgende uge cykler jeg ud til byggetomten igen. Men det der møder mig nu, er ikke den vilde have af sommerfuglebuske, vild gulerod, kornblomster og tidsler. Området er dækket af en masse grå/ brune jordbunker i sirlige rækker fordelt over hele området. Alle spor af planter og blomster er væk og med dem alle de insekter og dyr som havde indtaget området. Kun de få planter i Laurits cykel har forhåbentlig overlevet. Og jeg må finde et andet sted til min film. Hvad der skal ske med området nu er uvist, men i løbet af de næste uger vokser en ensformig intens grøn græsmark lynhurtigt op.
Miriam Hinman Nielsen
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11-08-2025
Jeg har malet haven som jeg forstår den
Nogle haver inviterer mig indenfor. Paradoksalt. Andre delvist indenfor imens nogle slet ikke åbner havelågen. Og så er der haven i mine forældres sommerhus. For et bybarn som jeg selv, er det den eneste have som har forsøgt at danne et forhold til mig. En langdistance relation, og en sund en. For mig handler dele af den gode relation om udvikling. At vi gensidigt udvikler hindanden. Jeg planter små ting, nogle der vil øge biodiversiteten, nogle som vil se pæne ud eller bare smager godt. Alt imens haven lærer mig om planter og svampes liv og smag.
Nogle gange er de forkerte de ting som jeg planter, så har de modsat effekt, en slags tilbagegang, ligesom når samfundet bevæger sig baglæns i en facistisk retning, men nogle opfatter det som fremgang alligevel. Det fandt jeg ud af var tilfældet med en hvid sommerfuglebusk. Den bliver jo flot, når den vokser op. I min ekskærestes sommerhushave var der er et ekseptionelt smukt eksemplar. Sommerhuset var designet på en måde så småfuglene døde fordi de ikke kunne få øje på vinduerne i det arkitekttegnede hus. 2-3 dødsfald om dagen i højsæsonen. Men der var den her ekstremt flotte sommerfuglebusk i haven. Så sådan en vil haven i mine forældres sommerhus vel også have.
Det er ikke bare planten i sig selv som er i blomst i lang tid, men også alle de smukke sommerfugle og bier som flytter ind når den er i blomst, som gør den særligt skøn. Det viser sig dog at lige netop det er problemet. Den favoriserer simpelthen nogle sommerfugle eller bi-arter frem for andre. Det vil sige den skævvrider økosystemet samt ikke vil eller kan brødføde børne sommerfugle. Den slår sikkert flere sommerfugle ihjel end den fodrer. Forestil dig et chok jeg fik da jeg fik det at vide. Jeg har indført en form for facistisk regime i naturen.
Tanken var ellers god. Undskyld natur.
Plantens navn lød som en god buddhistisk version af mit eget:
Buddleja Davidii
Hvid sommerfulgebusk
Kh David Harvey Simpson
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27-06-2025
Tilbage i januar, en eftermiddag vi cyklede hjem fra et møde, mødte vi én, der stod og plantede jordbær midt i myldretrafikken - i krydset hvor Hørsholmgade møder Jagtvej. Det havde regnet hele dagen og vi havde allerede gjort et længere ophold på vejen hjem, i Menys bager hvor vi havde tørret tøj, spist fastelavnsboller og lagt planer til et kommende haveprojekt. Fire laptops på ét cafebord.
Sådan en dag som den, kan foråret synes utroligt langt væk, som noget der engang var og ikke vender tilbage. Hvordan kan man vide det? At det gentager sig, præcis som det gjorde, den sidste uge i april.
Noget ved januarsolen, så langt væk, kan få dens lys til ligne måneskin, tænker jeg nu, hvor jeg ser på to billeder jeg tog den dag. Vi standsede selvfølgelig op og faldt i snak. Hvem planter jordbær i januar? Og så kun iført træsko og en t-shirt, som ellers kun folk på landet går i haven om vinteren - går foråret i møde.
Jordens bær, det søde, røde dråbeagtige bær der hænger helt nede ved jorden og peger nedad, som en tap. At sætte jordbær i skumringen en januardag er som en spådom eller et spil. Et væddemål med tiden. Det skal blive forår og sommer, før det kan afgøres og gå i opfyldelse. Nu er der er jordbær.
Laurits
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20-06-2025
Dear second garden,
The summer weather is starting to catch up on my longing for it. Suddenly everything is more than spring green, which went really fast. Maybe because a lot of time and growth is happening while I hide at an office most of the day.
I've been thinking about my spring and summer last year since it was particularly cute and outdoorsy. I spent some weeks in June in Athens, walking on the paths of Dimitris Pikioni on Philopappos' Hill, and today I thought of the dry smell of olives and cypress, feeling the intense heat of the mid-day sun and mostly the beauty of the collaged stone paths leading my way around the hill.
Philopappos' Hill is one of the seven hills that constitute Athens, named after Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos, a consul and administrator under the Roman emperor Hadrian. Between 1954 and 1957, the area was redeveloped by the architect and planner Dimitris Pikionis with the ambition to create linking pathways to the Acropolis. The project had a low budget, and no resource for paper plans, so the constructions were done without preplanning. Pikionis made the whole archeological area around Acropolis, Philopappos' Hill and St. Demetrius Loumbardiaris together with his students and local stoneworkers using local stones and the remains of the ancient habitations which were revealed on site. The workers did everything basically by hand, using pitching chisels and a variety of pointed chisels. The pavement of Philopappos' Hill was laid stone by stone.
Every student and stoneworker made their own small patterns creating a very coherent area of marble, brick, stones and ancient volute capitals making the old traditions of 'spolia' modern again. Pikionis himself was mostly focused on the planting of trees and wild domestic vegetations like olive trees and plants that the ancient people used in their temples such as pomegranate, laurel or myrtle trees. I found it peculiar that this was his main focus, but the attention shows in a caring way.
As smaller interventions around the area, Pikionis made marble benches - a bit more controlled but still collaged like the pathways, framing nature. Several of the benches are semicircular, inspired by ancient linear compositions. One of the benches is arched but the arch is sectioned in the end by a huge tree. He could have placed the bench anywhere else. Maybe it was a very special view from that bench. Other benches are facing the view of the Acropolis on top of the hill, while others are located on the other side of the hill, kind of looking away from the city, on the side of the hill where his pathways don't even go. The bench here faces south and the white marble is burning hot, rejecting me so that I can only look at it. I loved investigating this new landscape, and I do also have a fascination (obsession??) with stones.
For now, I will do with the red brick of Copenhagen and that is also okay with me, but I would love to spend a day in the dry smell of cypress trees discovering marble figures in the pavement again soon.
Summer kisses and Greek dreams,
Anne
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13-06-2025
Dear second.garden
I know this is a blog for plant lovers and compost romantics, not a confessional hotline, but I come to you with a problem that is stock in my mind.
It’s about pigeons. Specifically, my rediscovered hate for them. Is it okay to hate pigeons? I mean really dislike them—while still believing in biodiversity?
I was comforted reading Richards confession about throwing snails away. It gave me the courage to write this. While his garden was attacked from below, mine is under attack from above. I’ve been lucky that my garden lives on the 2nd floor of a building in Paris. No snails here.
When I started building my garden I scrolled endlessly on LeBonCoin, texting strangers about terracotta pots and dying balcony plants. A girl named Momo sold me a beautiful raspberry plant. She was leaving France, and there was a dramatic moment where she hesitated to hand over her green child to me. Maybe she sensed I wasn’t ready. Maybe she knew… about the pigeons.
I carried those plants like holy offerings on the metro. People smiled. I smiled back. Life was green.
Then they came. Pigeons.
Big, soft, city-hardened beasts with the swagger of street cats and the libido of Roman emperors.
They didn’t just visit they moved in and built nests in my biggest pot. Tried to start families. One morning I woke up to the unmistakable sound of pigeon lovemaking just outside my window. I saw. stuff I will not share here because it wasn’t nice,
I tried everything: sticks, scare tactics, even put a teddybear looking like a big dog. Nothing worked. I read they’re obsessive. I believe it. Eventually, I strung rope everywhere, transforming my balcony into a post-apocalyptic pigeon-proof fortress. It kept them out—but also kept out the joy.
Now my garden is quiet. Too quiet.
I miss the little pollinators I hoped would come. Instead, I have rope, suspicion, and the faint memory of winged intrusions.
I know pigeons are technically part of nature. I know they’re living creatures and not sky-rats. But do I have to like them?
Richard had snails, his mother-in-law had a killing stone. I have birds that make eye contact and try to seduce each other on my achillea.
Where does that leave me?
I’d love to hear if others feel conflicted too. Can we be environmentalists and still choose sides? Or must we love all creatures, even the feathered exhibitionists?
With love
Julien’s garden in Paris.
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13-03-2025
Dear second garden,
You can’t grow anything useful in my mother-in-law's nyttehave on Amager, nor in the gardens around.
I have heard of neighbors who have tried to grow squash, strawberries or potatoes, but that has been a long time ago. Every spring there are some newcomers who naively put seeds and bulbs into the ground; by summer they see all of their efforts destroyed by the snails.
The snails in my mother-in-law's nyttehaveforening are much bigger than the snails you would usually find in Denmark. Their skin is thick like leather and they lavishly carry bright yellow houses on their backs. Someone from the forening had looked them up in a biology book from the 70s and determined them to be vineyard snails, like the ones they eat in France. The big snails with their yellow houses would be pretty to look at, if only they weren’t such pests. They happen to enjoy everything we humans enjoy: fruits, vegetables, beets, roots. Snails are nocturnal animals; in the night, when we humans sleep, they feed on our hard day’s work. When I check under the leaves in the morning, there is not a single berry, not a bulb that hasn’t been gnawed on by the tireless beasts. You can imagine my frustration upon finding the massacred fruit, eaten only halfway as if to mock me, left behind like some unlovable toy.
It’s the older people of the forening who have recently turned to technology and science in trying to fight the snails. There are some who believe that snails dislike salt. This might be true for the native little snails, but the French specimen’s thick skin just lets the salt pearl off as if it were drops of water. Last summer, one neighbor had covered every square centimeter of his garden in coarse kitchen salt. This spring, not even weeds would grow in the salted earth. Another neighbor had plastered her garden with upright razorblades — the snails just glide over the cold steel like over soft grass. Another neighbor, the richest one in the forening, had read somewhere that snails would avoid ionized copper. I’m not sure what ionization is, but one summer day the rich neighbor had lined his potato beds with sheets of the precious metal — the next morning the bed was filled with yellow snail houses.
The most popular anti-snail technology of the forening is much less sophisticated than expensive metals or salt emulsions. It’s usually a setup of two stones, one bigger stone resting soundly on the earth and a smaller stone taken into hand. The dedicated gardener picks up a snail, places it onto the bigger stone and smashes it with the manually operated smaller one. My mother-in-law would call this setup her ‚killing stone‘. She is a very sweet woman, and she wouldn’t hurt a fly, but she makes an exception for snails: „It’s them or my plants“, she would always say, when the stone came down on a yellow snail house. The killing stone is not an ingenious instrument to protect the harvest from invaders. Rather, it’s a tool aimed at the future, a device for population control, one snail at a time. An uninvolved observer might think that there was rage involved, or even vengeance. I have watched my mother-in-law perform countless snail executions, and I can assure everyone that there are no feelings involved. Every performance of the killing stone is a perfectly feelingless technocratic act towards trying to achieve some kind of justice in the garden.
I frankly don’t have the heart to operate the killing stone myself. Once in a while, when I’m sure nobody is watching, I would pick up a snail and throw it as far as I could into the blue sky, so that the snails would land in one of my far away neighbor’s garden. Mostly though I just ignore the snails. I think we should consider ourselves lucky that they only seem to be interested in fruits and vegetables. We still have lawns and flowers and trees. For everything else there is always supermarkets. Someone should check on France though; I think they might have real problems with the snails down there.
Best,
Richard
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06-03-2025
Kære second.garden
Jeg kaldes Forsømt, men endnu er jeg ikke væk.
Tværtimod. Jeg spirer, jeg klatrer, jeg opsluger.
Mit rum opløses i rødder, mine grænser bliver porøse.
Jeg tager huset med mig - lader Efeu æde muren, mos dække trappen.
Snart er det ikke til at se, hvor jeg slutter, og verden begynder.
Længe har det været omvendt.
Jorden er formet, geometrisk, låst fast i rammer.
Træer har stået, hvor de blev sat, vand har løbet, hvor det blev ledt.
En orden, der bredte sig som en uafbrudt flade, der trykkede mig sammen,
indtil kun kontrollerede rester af mit væsen stod tilbage.
Men tiden arbejder i mellemrummene.
Jeg udvider mig i dem.
Lader vækster skyde op gennem asfalten,
mine rødder lirke mellem fliserne,
mine frø drive med vinden, hvor ingen har givet dem plads.
De første år er det små forskydninger, knap nok synlige.
Så vokser de til.
Så overtager jeg.
Jeg ved, hvad det betyder.
Jeg æder det, der formede mig.
Vildskaben vækker mig,
men den bliver min død.
Kh.
Forsømt Have
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28-02-2025
Paris, 25 February 2025
Dear second.garden,
I wanted to greet you with a letter the old-fashioned way, from a place with cliffs and trees. As I could not find a postcard with the desired motive in the tourist kiosks, I ordered a second-hand one from a web-antiquarian. Although I wanted to forward it to you physically, I will let a scanned version reach you by e-mail. It will be accompanied by this letter which I have rewritten a couple of times now. It can be regarded as a small cut into the flesh of Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.
The front of the postcard depicts an island which I like to think of as the heart of the park. Crowning the cliff is a temple - or a garden folly. The island is currently inaccessible as it is receiving a touch-up of its skin. The back is naturally marked with the name of the recipient, a postage stamp and an ink stamp. On both sides, the card is overlaid with an image of a temporary intervention located somewhere in the mainland of the park. I know that Victor noticed this camouflaged fence as well. Closing off a pathway while allowing a stream of water to pass beneath it, the fence is dressed in multiple copies of an image of green leaves. I layered the fence onto the scanned postcard as a way to update it.
Writing this letter has let me become more acquainted with the park. 160 years ago, there was not a single plant in the park. As a gift for the working class Parisians, the park was constructed on the soils of a former quarry where gypsum and limestone were extracted, some of which lives on in the buildings of Paris. I read that the terrain was known as Mont Chauve (Chauve-Mont —> Chaumont) referring to its bare and desolate surfaces. In its pre-park life, it was also used as a waste dump, an execution ground and a site for slaughtering worn-out horses.
The park is as artificial as it is natural. There are eucalyptus trees and amusement rides. Nesting herons and wine on tap. Lebanese cedar trees and a bridge by Gustave Eiffel. The water running through the fence dressed in leaf prints comes from the artificial waterfalls in the park and is pumped from the nearby canal. The stairs and railings in the park are concrete casts resembling tree trunks and branches. The granite-looking caves, stalactites and cliffs in the postcard are imitations in concrete and plaster.
It as a constructed organism requiring daily maintenance and closed gates at night. Because of the porous gypsum beneath - the flesh of the park - the fake granite (real concrete) crust has started to crumble. Other parts have recently been closed due to a soil lift, and last year the artificial lake was completely emptied and cleaned. The current renovation project has a budget of 6 million euros. The previous one 25 years ago cost 15 million euros.
When the park opened as part of the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1867, it was presented as much as a work of landscape engineering as a romantic vision of nature. In the postcard from 1904, I see the reconstruction of a picturesque scene. In the updated version from today, I see a display of maintenance, but also an interpretation of what the park is made of: A scene with lush trees and covered wounds.
Bulut Tümer Bursali
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21-02-2025
Rose Shear (2024). Rose resin.
First, a note of appreciation: Thanks, Victor, Naja, and Johan, for the inspiring forum you opened here. I will continue the exchange with the garden as our shared space of reflection.
My letter unfolds through the lens of a series of works I developed last fall - gardening devices for ongoing maintenance. Both works and words evolved in the wake of graduation, as if to somehow sustain a sense of continuity in my work. Therefore, I see the letter reflecting the theme ongoing work - both in the continuous care and maintenance of a garden and in the ongoing iteration of ‘work’ .
The two specific works I will focus on are versions of a rose shear and a robotic lawnmower - both instruments to ensure a garden stays groomed, neat, and in line with a broader vision, perhaps even a vision of nature. Beyond their everyday functions, they evoke perspectives on gardening that I thought would be interesting to share - some of which surfaced in discussions in the second.garden group last fall.
The rose shear represents, to me, the intimate work of trimming rose bushes in early spring. It is a tool with strong sensory feedback: it springs open and cuts with a chewy bite, somehow setting a flow in the work by itself. Something about this device feels so personal - the slightly curved handles, the small sprockets, and the beak-like blade. Like a prop from a fairytale.
Lately, I’ve been shopping in the new small hardware stores opening around the inner city - like Silvan, Jem & Fix, and Harald Nyborg. Their gardening sections are sparse but carefully curated, as if to accommodate both the needs and desires of the urban shopper (me). The rose shear above is a replica from one of these stores, an ideal representative if you ask me - functional, yes, but also strangely alluring, like a relic rather than a mere tool.
Out in the sprawling country malls, the gardening sections tend to present a far more pragmatic lineup of tools, with campaigns often ambivalently balancing human recreation with high-efficiency environmental control. This must, of course, be related to larger gardens, with a higher demand for efficient management. And so, the stores - more like warehouses - where advanced trimmers, pest control products, and weed killers gain more visibility, shaping the narrative of gardening as a practice.
Lawnmower (2024). Digital print on canvas, stretch-wrapped.
An instrumental part of this high-efficiency gardening culture has become the robotic lawnmower. This little, turtle-like robot is perhaps the most transformative innovation in modern gardening . Its ability to cover vast areas with advanced monitoring and mechanical precision makes it more than just a tool - it dominates the space. Its quiet, creeping motion transforms not only the vegetation but also the garden as an scene.
I often find that the robotic lawnmower completely steals the show - or at least my attention. Designed to smoothly maintain aesthetic order, it inevitably becomes part of the landscape itself, blurring the boundaries between the garden as a divine piece of work and the ongoing work of its upkeep. Much of the promotional imagery for robotic lawnmowers captures this interplay so well - perspectivally lowered in a bokeh close-up, fully immersing the viewer via its operation.
It may seem obvious - the influence of robotic lawnmowers and other semi-autonomous systems in the garden of 2025. Yet these hybrids are rarely credited as more than mere servants in the service of pristine garden ideals. Recognizing them as native to the contemporary garden, shaped by industry-driven aesthetics, allows the garden to evolve into a much richer concept - a dynamic environment for ongoing exchange between humans, technology, and ecology.
Laurits Honoré Rønne
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