Farní zahrada Blansko

The church garden Blansko

Last November I was asked to make a project for an ancient church garden restoration. The garden was going to be restored on the occasion of building a new vicarige.

It turned to be quite an adventure. At  this moment the project documentation is almost ready and we are beginning to work on the realization.

Although Bill Mollison at the PDC course warned us not to engage in realization of our designs, I was happy I had been asked to participate in this exciting and challenging job.

The garden is about one hectare large and as far as we could research it had been used to grow things for at least 800 years. It is still being  partially cultivated to grow vegetables and flowers for he church, although this function is diminishing. Originally it was much larger, but during the communist period much of the church land was confiscated and used for industrial buildings. Today it is surrounded by the town structures – houses, administration buildings and the railway station. Nevertheless it is still very quiet and somehow hidden from the main rush.

The garden is situated on an eastward and partly northward facing slope, almost at the bottom of the hill. At the very bottom it is reaching the floodplain of the Svitava river.  There is a little stream running through the garden and cutting it into two almost the same parts. The part further from the church has been used as a little pasture for three sheep and an orchard with beehives. The part nearer to the church has been cultivated – dug, tilled, fertilized to produce some vegetables  and flowers.

The main aims of the design were to

-         make most of the stream running through. It is often polluted with sewage from the houses and cottages above, so we need to clean the water first.

-         reshape the vegetable groving space, so it can produce more effectively more vegetables and little fruits

-         clear the unsuitable coniferous regrowth and replace it with a fruit forest

-         connect the FARNÍ yard to the garden and make it a welcoming community place

There is a lot of material of a different kind in the garden at the moment so we are trying to use it all to build the structures so that nothing goes to waste.

The preparation phase was very smooth, mainly thanks to Faher George, the priest of the church who is very enthusiastic and very diplomatic. The only problem occured when planning the cascade on the stream as this is something that has to go through a long bureaucratic procedure and it is not resolved yet.

The work starts on the 21.February and we are very excited.