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UNIVERSAL HOME

A chest-high wooden fence encloses the former farmhouse garden, reinterpreted as a family garden, of the baroque rectory Trub. A gravelled circular path runs along the inside of this enclosure, accompanied by two lush vegetation strips. An extensive plant collection blooms on them in a varied annual cycle. Reminiscent of a cloister, a wreath of Amelanchier ovalis gives the garden a spatial structure. By the house, where the ring-way widens up to a pebbled seating area, an apricot trellis, a vine and rambler roses climb up. On the opposite side of the garden, a small fountain provides freshness.

Box parterres, whose dimensions relate to each other according to the medieval quadrature, are distributed over the central lawn. The largest one in the centre, with a wealth of vegetables and flowers, is reminiscent of the historic origins of the cottage garden developing into a vegetable and herb garden. The smallest, enclosing a clerodendrum, occupies the view from the seating area at the house. In the middle axis of the house, there is a parterre with a yew – the predecessor of this tree of death once showed the pastor the way to the church and the cemetery. A tupelo tree with fire-red foliage completes the group of symbol trees, which span an equilateral triangle. The small hill with the tupelo tree symbolizes the connection between earth and sky, body and spirit.

Among the finds of the old site is a sign laid in the ground with stone slabs. The symbol of Pluto, the ruler of the realm of the dead? When the dwarf planet of the same name rises above the horizon on the longest day of the year, the northernmost star of the Corona Borealis, seen from the seating area, stands above the top of the church tower, the southernmost above the top of the tupelo tree.

In the form of the old rowanberry trees and the fruit trees on the neighbouring cattle pasture, the garden grows out into the cultural landscape. The rock pear, which had been introduced by rail in the 19th century as a neophyte and spread in the forest above the house, finds a new home as a constituent element of the site.

This strategy has been developed for:

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Garden of the rectory Trub

Location: Trub, CH

Year: 2015 - 2017

Architecture: Boltshauser Architekten, Zürich

Lansdscape architecture: Maurus Schifferli, Bern

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