Swede as!

I’m loving Gothenburg in Sweden. But then what’s not to like about a city that celebrates gardens to the extent that every second banner on the streets right now is showcasing a cabbage or a carnivorous plant? The Gardens of Gothenburg festival, which runs until September 28 this year, is clearly embraced by the local council. And so it should be. What fun I’ve had! There are vegetables everywhere, from the botanical gardens to the marvellous inner-city Garden Society park known as Trädgårdsföreningen (try saying that after a couple of glasses of Swedish schnapps!)
Gardens of Gothenburg is a fantastic festival because it’s spread over four quite different venues, it runs all summer long, it’s not overly commercial, and the installations – from international designers from London to New York – range from classically beautiful to quirky and whimsical.
I went to Trädgårdsföreningen first. This garden is as old as New Zealand: it was officially formed in 1842, but recently they’ve been renewing the planting. There’s a modern rose park with newly planted beds designed by Piet Oudolf, for example, and even the most contemporary installations don’t look out of place. I loved the espaliered pears and apple trees, at least 5m high, trained up one of the historic buildings (pictured above, behind the palms and agaves).
The highlight though, was Gunnebo House and Gardens, an 18th century park that’s considered to be one of the foremost neo-classical country estates in Northern Europe. The house boasts three styles of gardens, kitchen garden, formal garden and landscaped parkland. As you can probably guess, I made a beeline for the vege patch!
Three designers were commissioned to create “kitchen gardens of the future” in a spot right next to the organic potager that supplies Gunnebo’s restaurant. There was a strong sustainability theme behind all the gardens; one was entirely planted in recycled bags from the construction industry (very cool); another is using all the restaurant’s glass bottles to slowly build a glasshouse over the summer. There was even a mobile kitchen garden designed around a campervan, with its tent awning transformed into a greenhouse and edible plants sprawling around its wheels.
At Gunnebo, they’ve also recreated an authentic 18th century kitchen garden planted with heritage varieties, but my absolute favourite design was the antithesis of this tidy arrangement. It was a futuristic kitchen garden designed as an edible meadow in “a revolt against Gunnebo’s strict lines and symmetry” and I must admit it’s inspired me to step up my self-sufficiency campaign even more. I’m just going to plant veges EVERYWHERE and let them fight it out for supremacy. I love the concept of an edible meadow, with crops coming and going in a happy jumble.
Best of all, the purple/bronze colour scheme will translate perfectly into my front garden, so I’m going to pinch the idea – lock, stock and barrel!
The plants they’d used included: huge purple cabbages, maroon-foliaged ‘Bull’s blood’ beetroot, lime kohlrabi as big as baseballs, purple sage (Salvia officinalis ‘Purpurea’), bronze fennel, leeks, red lettuce, dwarf beans, red amaranthus, rhubarb, curry plant (although you’d have to chop off the yellow flowers later in summer or they’d ruin the colour scheme). And the piece de resistance? Variegated sage (Salvia officinalis ‘Tricolor’). I’ve always thought this was the ugliest plant on the planet (although it’s a close battle with the salmon-pink Chinese toon tree), but in this edible meadow it was a touch of absolute genius.
PS. I must look like a local. Everyone keeps chatting to me in Swedish.