The third chapter
In the third chapter of the garden saga at Astrid Lindgren’s Näs, there are spaces for courage, hope and creativity. Here is the cherry terrace, where romantic vegetation is mixed with the unexpected, a fountain marking the source of the stream is embedded in both greenery and music, and the Oak Grove has been filled with crafts, games and quirks.
The Cherry Staircase
On one of the south-facing slopes of the garden is the Cherry Staircase, the garden room that has come to symbolise courage. Here you can run up stairs and through gates, or take a leisurely pace on the winding path along terraces filled with cherry trees.
The Oak Grove
A garden is really just one big ‘room of creativity’, but to really celebrate them, imagination, play and invention all got their own spaces in the garden. Here, themes and activities change over seasons and years, as it should be when it come to creativity. The important thing is that the space is used, becoming what the visitor makes of it.
The Stream
Once upon a time, a stream ran through the fields behind Näs. Astrid Lindgren often referred to it when recounting her and her siblings’ games and adventures. ‘Having a stream in the garden adds its own special ecosystem. It is now flowing here again and along its edge grows golden-saxifrage, marsh-marigold, sedge and bulrush.
“…my God who had to walk so piously along the little path between the bird cherry and hazel, past the stream where the marsh marigold shone yellow in spring, along the ditch of wild strawberries, past the spring, the deep and mysterious one where the milk was cooled in the summer heat, up to the old wash-house, that stood there brooding and lonely in the greenery and then – amen – there was the ditch where the golden-saxifrage grew.”
Astrid Lindgren, from ‘Samuel August från Sevedstorp och Hanna i Hult’
