Grün Berlin offers regular elektrocar tours of Tegeler Stadtheide – an excellent initiative since the area will not be otherwise acessible to the general public for another couple of years. All events there organised by Grün Berlin can be found in Umweltkalender Berlin.
Today’s guide was Detlev Dahlmann who with his vast knowledge made the tour extremely interesting. Before we proceeded to Tegeler Stadtheide, we had a short introduction to the startup hub and to Urban Tech Republic.
It was very uplifting to see the wide variety of plants which have appeared on this former airfield, with no human effort or intereference. They find their way there because they can thrive there under today’s circumstances without added fertilizers or inordinate amounts of water.
In short, another case for banning those unsustainable, high-maintenance as well as boring and uninteresting, lawns and perennials and highly cultivated gardens.
To me, the lawns are the worst – firstly, they are not native to our parts of the world, secondly, they need to be watered all the time and water is now a scarce but valuable for other purposes resource, thirdly, they need fertilizer, not to mention pesticides most of which seep into the ground and groundwater, and all this in order to make them grow so that they need to be mowed with fossil-fuel-guzzling machines every five minutes. It is insane, when you think about it. There ought to be a law against them and I am happy to see more and more of the public ones in Berlin being replaced by wonderful wildflower wildernesses.
With time, many of the plants that have appeared on Tegeler Stadtheide will be edible, but for now, the earth is too polluted. This includes Amaranth – one of the healthiest foods on the planet. Full of essential nutrients and – unlike most other plant-based foods – a complete protein. I am thinking most people have not yet discovered that fact since it is still relatively inexpensive compared to the current hype and closest relative in the health and wellness realm: quinoa.
Oh, and by the way, most wildflowers are great soil purifiers in that they remove toxins from soil-polluting industries, including airports whose environmental impact is spread over large areas. The same cannot be said for for example roses (who needs them?) and other highly cultivated plants.
There are also many birds there – I saw several which I was unable to identify, let alone photograph – one of them was a large bird of prey that took off from the ground when we appeared. I did manage to photograph a Kestrel – my favourite bird of prey although I am well aware that they are not as cute as they look – fierce and formidable hunters that they are, and – from afar – some birds decoratively perched on top of the old landing lamps and were either Whinchats/Braunkehlchen or Northern Wheatear/Steinschmätzer (according to a combined effort between the Merlin app and the NABU app – I will try to do some more detective work later).
At the end of the post, examples of plants that will have appeared (almost) as if by magic where asphalt has been broken into uneven pieces, thus, apparently, creating optimal conditions for plants that thrive in mountainous regions.
The light conditions were less than ideal, and it was even drizzling at bit at times, so I am very happy to possess a ticket for two similar tours – one on 27 September, and one on 21 October. (Even if some of it will seem repetitive, I love big open spaces, repurposed industry, birds, and nature left to its own devices, and these tours combine all of those). The tour I went on today will be repeated on 2 October.
Since retiring and moving from Copenhagen to Berlin nearly ten years ago, I have fallen in and out of love with Berlin many times, but mostly in, thanks to initiatives such as these (the plans for the disused airfield, and the fact that these tours are available to us).
