Floriade 2012 – The Garden Lounge

This week opens the Floriade, the World Horticultural Exo in Venlo. The Floriade is a unique garden expo, organised once every 10 years in the Netherlands. I will visit the expo quite soon and will tell you more about the park and its show gardens in the near future. In the meantime, I would like to show you the first garden for the expo I have found on competition online. It’s a ‘Garden Lounge’, designed by German landscape architects Büro Drecker. 

The ‘Garden Lounge’ consists of a rectangular garden room and is enclosed with formal hedges. The main design element is a massive elliptical wooden deck located in the center of the garden. Diagonal plant stripes with ornamental grasses like Molinia, Festuca, Carex, Pennisetum and Luzula connect the wooden deck with the rest of the garden. The cool and fresh colours of Astilbe, Cimicifuga, Campanula, Convallaria, Hosta, Iris and Lavender form an  interesting contrast to the warm wooden shades of the deck.