Plants as Renewable Resources Exhibit at the Progressive German Federal Garden Show (BUGA)

Every two years at the Federal Garden Show in Germany, called BUGA, there is an exhibit organized by the German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection that showcases plants as valuable renewable resources. Outside there are many rows of various crops organized by industrial categories like dyes, pharmaceutical, foods, textiles, oils, fuels, and so on. Inside the pavilion the various plants are shown with their respective end uses. For instance, hemp is always a major example displayed here, growing outside, and shown inside usually shown with the hemp door panels used by some car manufacturers like Daimler as well as other uses.

There are many other plants that may be used as renewable resources for our industrial society. This exhibit and the garden shows are truly remarkable and you will surely not see anything like them here in the US. This progressive attitude by the German government and its citizens, as is showcased at their garden shows, is the reason that I started organizing ecotours to Germany every two years to coincide with the garden shows. This ecotour visits some of them most cutting edge sustainable design and living concepts in architecture, garden design, urban planning, product design, transportation, and so on. The next ecotour is next year in August 2009. To learn more, please visit: www.GreenHarmonyTours.com.

Roland's Websites:
Green Harmony Living
Green Harmony Design
Green Harmony Tours

2009 Adventure Ecotour of Germany

20-30.August.2009 - Adventure Ecotour of Germany 2009: Discovering the Baltic Coast, Berlin, and Saxony’s Secret Green Architecture and Gardens

Join eco pioneer, Roland Oehme for an Incredible Experience of Germany's Sustainable Lifestyle!

We Offer Personalized Small Group, Carbon Offset Tours. Our tours emphasize Germany's wonderful progressive design sense as seen in its amazing garden shows, parks and gardens, sustainable architecture, transportation, beautiful pedestrian oriented towns and cities, and many other examples of sustainable living.

Come Join Us Next Year, 2009, to See the Unique German Federal Garden Show (BUGA) in Schwerin!

The German Federal Garden Show is the Olympic of garden shows as it only happens once every two years in a different city in Germany. Unlike the many temporary garden or flower shows in the USA or England, this horticultural extravaganza in Germany takes years of planning at all levels of government and the relevant private sector in order to build a permanent park for the city's residents to use forever.

The next German Federal Garden Show will take place not until 2011, so you won't want to miss next year's tour in 2009!

For more info and to signup: www.GreenHarmonyTours.com

Roland's Websites:
www.GreenHarmonyDesign.com - Sustainable garden design
www.GreenHarmonyLiving.com - Organic products for your green & healthy lifestyle
www.GreenHarmonyTours.com - Adventure ecotours of Germany

German Book of Wolfgang Oehme's Life - Just Released Jan. 2008

Wolfgang Oehme is my father, so I am honored to help spread information about his new book. So please read on.

Announcing the new book: Between Garden Grasses: Wolfgang Oehme and his Extraordinary Gardens in the New World by Stefan Leppert.

Green Harmony Living feels privileged to be the exclusive US retailer of this unique, just released German language book about Wolfgang Oehme's life and work as a preeminent landscape architect. Hot off the press in January 2008, this book chronicles the professional journey of Wolfgang Oehme. From his childhood in war torn Germany, to his postwar forays around Europe, to his giant leap to the east coast of the US, to his remarkable solo career designing gardens, to his highly successful partnership with James van Sweden with their landscape architecture firm Oehme, van Sweden & Associates, Inc., and ultimately to his successful solo projects in his German homeland and the US.

The books 144 pages are packed with 225 impressive photos of people, dreamlike gardens, drawings, Wolfi plants, and much more. The books' many photos make this book a worthy show book for your coffee table, even if the German language is not in your lexicon.

You may order this book and learn much more about Wolfgang Oehme at his official website www.WolfgangOehme.com.

Wolfgang will personally autograph your copy if you wish, and shipping is free!!!

Wolfgang Oehme Foundation:
Each purchase of this book supports the Wolfgang Oehme Foundation. This foundation is committed 1) to supporting the maintenance of the numerous public gardens in Towson designed by Wolfgang, 2) to educating the public on Wolfgang’s style of bold, natural, and sustainable garden design, maintenance, and horticulture, and 3) to establishing a large public garden, like Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, that will physically convey Wolfgang Oehme’s unique vision of bold, natural, and sustainable garden design, maintenance, and horticulture.

Where Are the Bike Lanes and Trails in Maryland???!!!

Dear One Less Car!

I believe wholeheartedly in the mission of your organization. I am a bicycle advocate and rider and feel the biggest need right now is more places to ride safely in the state of MD. Where I live in Towson there aren’t any bike lanes or trails so bike riding around here is a challenge because it doesn't feel safe and many roads simply aren't suitable for bikes b/c of the high speed, the lanes are too narrow, and/or the roads are too busy. The rest of Baltimore County and for that matter, the state of MD, is lacking in bike facilities like these where one can ride safely. There are of course a few notable exceptions such as the Northern Central and the B & A Trails that are great but are too few in number and too far away from where I live. We should have the bicycle infrastructure in place that allows everyone in this state to be able to get on their bike at their home and bike to anywhere they want whether it is to go shopping, to work, to the bank, the post office, to the movie theater, and so on. And they should be able to do so on a safe network of onroad bike lanes and offroad bike trails throughout the state.

The image above is a view of the excellent bike trail around the Amber Lake at Bitterfeld, Germany. We certainly can learn much from the many beautiful bicycle facilities in numerous European countries.

Does your group ever lobby for the state or local jurisdictions to construct more bike lanes and/or bike trails? If yes, please tell me more about this. If no, why not, and do you have any suggestions for how to go about doing so?

Best regards,

Roland Oehme, RLA
Landscape Architect
Green Harmony Design

Adventure Ecotour of Germany 2007: Discovering Saxony's Secret Green Architecture and Gardens: Why Germany?

Annoucing Green Harmony Tours':

Adventure Ecotour of Germany 2007: Discovering Saxony's Secret Green Architecture and Gardens

V. Why Germany?

Thank you for your interest in our unique regenerative design tour of Middle Germany highlighting a forgotten area of Germany with its many beautiful gardens, parks, and landscapes, but also the ecological designs found in all aspects of the larger society including agriculture, architecture, arts, brownfield reuse, design heritage, industrial design, industry, renewable energy, technology, transportation, and so on.

While Germany is perhaps more known for its old world charm, today the country has undertaken a leadership role in all facets of sustainable and ecological living. Germany recycles the most paper of any country in the world, has the world largest solar power plant, is committed to phasing out nuclear power, the federal government is actively promoting the use of renewable resources produced from agricultural crops, such as hemp and flax, global warming is being dealt with directly by joining the Kyoto Protocol and whole towns and cities are focused on phasing out fossil fuels and increasing their use of renewable energy, the precedent setting federal law requiring product manufacturers to take back their packaging for reuse or recycling thereby reducing waste, roofgardens are required in some cities to improve the air quality and beauty of the surroundings, the automobile’s presence is being lessened in inner cities and towns so its citizens may enjoy a better and safer living environment with less noise, pollution, and more room for pedestrians, architects are designing buildings that creative and less detrimental to the environment, and landscape architects design memorable and natural gardens and parks.

All of this green thinking and living is admirable, but in Germany it permeates to a larger consciousness of living in harmony with the Earth. This ideology has shown itself recently as the country passed the first animal rights law giving animals the same rights as humans. Germans also enjoy very much being in their gardens and in nature, and place a high priority on having plants all around them, even in urban environments. Freie Koerper Kultur (free body culture) or public displays of nudity was popularized in Germany many years ago and is still enjoyed today, as can be seen in downtown Berlin in its many public parks. Instead of relying on harsh chemicals at swimming pools, Germany has started what are called “swimming ponds” that recreate the natural cleansing processes that take place in ponds in a larger size to allow safe and nontoxic swimming with frogs and fish.

In Germany there exists a gardening culture where people actually live with their gardens providing food, aesthetic beauty, a place for physical activity, and stress relief. Furthermore a natural, ecological garden style, with a certain degree of a wild aesthetic, prevails where people grow perennials and grasses, generally don’t mind some wild plants, and allow the garden to grow to its full exuberance, or as we call this in the US, “to become overgrown”. This natural garden aesthetic allows humans to derive some use of the space, but also is crucial to humans feeling one with nature, and furthermore, is vital to wildlife’s health and continued survival. In this scenario, nature is not seen as a force to be combated, but to be enjoyed and brought into our lives. Examples abound of this strong horticultural ethic from the “Schrebergaerten” or community gardens found in every city where apartment dwellers spend their free time growing fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers organized in orderly rectangular grids, to the bountiful flowers proudly displayed around many houses and buildings in towns and cities, to richly planted school gardens, to the intensively planted and well maintained burial sites in cemeteries that people visit often and function as public parks, to the use of dry stacked natural stone retaining walls, and to the “Obstwiese” or orchard meadow.

One of the most important examples of Germany’s strong garden culture is the one of its kind “Bundesgartenschau” (BUGA) or Federal Garden Show, hosted in a different German city every two years. The garden show is the Olympics of the landscape architecture and horticulture professions with a large budget from federal, state, and city funding. There are design competitions for the master plan and each of the various concept areas. Millions of visitors typically visit the show which runs from spring to fall and thereafter continues as a public, urban park. The garden show typically includes large planting areas, a conference building, various dining facilities, music performances, seating areas, recreational facilities for all ages, landscape artworks, cemetery space, agricultural fields, a sustainable natural resources exhibit where hemp is prominent, and wildlife habitat. Serious investments in infrastructure include new roads, trains, busses, and pedestrian facilities. These innovative garden shows were started over fifty years ago to help rebuild war ruined cities and continues to this day. Over the past decade, several shows have taken place in eastern Germany greatly improving cities with new infrastructure and healthier, green living spaces.

The “Landesgartenschau” (LAGA) or State Garden Show, while not as big as the federal show, gives one a more intimate flavor of the local region and is hosted every year in different towns and cities in Germany.

Adventure Ecotours of Germany was developed and is under the authority of Green Harmony Tours, a tour company promoting cultural and ideas exchange between Americans and Germans of progressive, green, environmentally friendly, sustainable, and socially equitable concepts with the goal of helping humanity live in harmony with Nature and each other. To learn more about our tours, please visit our website at www.greenharmonytours.com.

No portion of this document may be reproduced without the express written consent of the Green Harmony Tours’ director, Roland Oehme. Opinions expressed in this document are not necessarily endorsed by Green Harmony Tours’ officers or staff. Copyright © 2007. All rights reserved.