Maverick plantsperson Harald Sauer has burst on to the international horticultural scene with his bold, norm-breaking approach to planting in public parks in Germany
WORDS STEPHANIE MAHON PHOTOGRAPHS CLAIRE TAKACS
Harald Sauer is the most interesting plantsperson you probably haven’t heard of. A master gardener, he leads the team at Ebertpark in Ludwigshafen, southwest Germany – a public park he has put on the horticultural map with his creative and daring, habitat-based planting designs, including his interesting solutions to the thorny question of maintenance. They range from borders where ground elder is purposely left to mingle prettily with tough perennials, to unusual, eye-popping displays of annuals and tender plants – bedding, yes, but not as you know it.
Those who have already visited marvel at his unorthodox approach, but, owing to a simple language barrier, the rest of us in the English-speaking gardening world have been missing out. That’s likely to change now that Harald has been launched on to the international stage with his new designs for Luisenpark in the nearby city of Mannheim. It was the venue for the national garden show, BUGA23, and the much talked-about Dynamic Vision Symposium last summer, where the top dogs of planting design came from all over the globe to talk shop. The park was first created back in 1975, as the site for that year’s BUGA, and went on to function – as most public parks do – as a place for leisure activities and often questionable horticulture.
Fast forward to mid-pandemic, in August 2020, when Luisenpark’s horticultural director Ellen Oswald approached Harald about helping to change the park’s entrance area in time for the 2023 show, to add a bit of Ebertpark-style zhuzh. “The plantings were all annuals, very colourful – very old fashioned,” Harald explains. “We went around together and Ellen pointed out several areas she thought we could change.”
Ellen asked him to redo a strip where people come into the park, but he wasn’t convinced it would have any impact. “All the places we looked at added up to about 300 square metres, but they were in single pieces that were just too small to create good perennial planting. So I said, ‘If you want me to do it my way, I’ll need a little more space… or a lot more.’” So, Ellen gave him free rein, which was pretty brave, Harald says, because BUGA is a big, months-long show, where everyone expects lots of colourful blooms in bedding displays.
He was more interested in introducing a perennial
