As things stand, the State Garden Show in Kamp-Lintfort is probably the only one still open this year. Thomas Armonat has summarized for you what you can expect there.

Due to the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, the State Garden Show in Ingolstadt was postponed to 2021. The State Garden Show in Überlingen also started over a year late. Only the State Garden Show in Kamp-Lintfort opened on schedule in 2020. The garden show took place from May 5 to October 25, 2020. A total of 450,000 people visited it. Everything you need to know about the horticultural show and what will happen on the site now (Kamp-Lintfort railroad station is to be built here by 2026) can be found here.

The actual start date of the Kamp-Lintfort State Garden Show was planned for April 17, 2020. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, which broke out in Germany at the beginning of 2020, the Kamp-Lintfort State Garden Show was only able to open a month later. From May 5 to October 25, over 450,000 people visited the garden show on the former Friedrich Heinrich 1/2 mine site and at Kamp Monastery. This made the Kamp-Lintfort State Garden Show the 18th state garden show in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Despite being open, the Kamp-Lintfort State Garden Show had to cancel most of the planned events due to the exit and contact restrictions imposed as part of the coronavirus pandemic. This included the opening ceremony. Most of the time, the visit itself was only possible under certain conditions. At the end of the Kamp-Lintfort State Garden Show, Mayor Prof. Dr. Landscheidt said that it had been the right decision to open the garden show despite the pandemic. He is now looking forward to the future. The colliery park, the information center and the Green Fan Lab of the Rhein Waal University of Applied Sciences would remain permanently. In addition, a new quarter will be created on part of the Landesgartenschau.

The Kamp-Lintfort State Garden Show will also act as a public transport catalyst in the long term. From May 16, 2020, visitors will be able to reach the Landesgartenschau Kamp-Lintfort by train. To this end, the city of Kamp-Litford reactivated the route of the former “Grubenanschlussbahn Zeche Friedrich Heinrich-Rheinpreußen-Hafen” between the State Garden Show and Rheinkamp, a district of Moers. The “Kamp-Lintfort Süd” stop was also built. The plan: The railroad line is to be extended to connect Duisburg with Kamp-Lintfort from 2026. You can find out more about the current planning status here.

In addition, radio k.w. reported at the beginning of November 2021 that Kamp-Lintfort is now certain to get its own train station. The corresponding draft was presented to politicians on November 2, 2021. The plan was for a ground-level station – without stairs or ramps. However, it is not yet clear whether there will also be a station building. According to the city of Kamp-Lintfort, this depends on whether an investor or operator can be found. However, one thing is certain: the station should be ready by 2026.

State Garden Show Kamp-Lintfort in a nutshell

Planning: bbzl – böhm benfer zahiri landschaften städtebau, Berlin
Framework dates: May 5 to October 25, 2020
Costs: unknown
Visitors: 450,000 people

Landscape planning concept by bbzl

For many decades, everything in this town of just under 40,000 inhabitants north-west of Duisburg revolved around coal mining before the Friedrich Heinrich colliery was shut down in 2012. The plans for the conversion of the former colliery site consisted of two sections: The western area with the large neighborhood square became the “Friedrich Heinrich” urban quarter with 800 new apartments in the future. During the garden show, temporary exhibition areas were located here on the future construction sites. The eastern part of the site, on the other hand, formed the green counterpart of the new quarter as a large new city park.

In 2017, the Berlin office bbzl – böhm benfer zahiri landschaften städtebau won the competition for the permanent facilities. Their design won over the jury as it connects the new 25-hectare colliery park around the city-defining coal mine to the adjacent old housing estate without barriers via new pathways. The site, which has been fenced off for decades, is finally part of the urban fabric again.

Great Goorley as a living space

Another central element of the urban redevelopment in Kamp-Lintfort is the Große Goorley: since July 2018, the Linksniederrheinische Entwässerungsgenossenschaft (LINEG) has had 670 meters of its upper course redesigned in a near-natural way. It is now once again a habitat for plants and animals. However, the Große Goorley is still mainly fed by the groundwater pumps of the mine shafts. In the past, the 2.4-kilometre-long Große Goorley was degraded to a drainage ditch and sewer for the Friedrich Heinrich colliery. It was heavily developed, over-molded and partially blocked. The section was opened up and rebuilt in accordance with the European Water Framework Directive. The meandering section of water with flattened banks now borders the newly designed colliery park on its north-eastern side.

Motif: working with the topography

At the same time, bbzl’s design envisaged connecting the Kamper Berg to the north-west to the Große Goorley. This was to be done via the existing, almost three-kilometre-long “Wandelweg” along the river landscape. To achieve this, the landscape architects added a cycle path on the other side of the river to the narrow footpath. They also linked it with three new bridges. The listed Kamp Monastery is located on Kamper Berg. This was founded in 1123 as the first German-speaking Cistercian monastery. The garden show slogan “From Paradise Garden to Central Park” indicates that the landscape architects are adding three new “paradise gardens” to the historic monastery gardens. They are located along a footpath that provides barrier-free access to Kamper Berg.

Plant species selected for extreme locations

Large-scale earth movements in the course of coal mining and the resulting rubble from demolished colliery buildings gave the landscape architects the motive to work with topography. In two hills running parallel to the Große Goorley, contaminated soils and building rubble disappeared in a landscape structure under a double seal and a 1.5-metre-high layer of soil. Dealing with the contaminated soil was an issue throughout the site. The planners therefore had half a meter of new soil applied in the park as an uncontaminated recultivation layer.

The grove-like planting of today’s almost tree-free colliery park is more compact in the east as a “green fringe”, while the tree density becomes looser towards the west. Particular attention was paid to selecting species that would be able to cope with the local, extreme locations and the drier, warmer conditions of ongoing climate change. Only smaller species were used on the recultivated landscape structure: Sorbus intermedia, S. incana, S. aria ‘Magnifica’, Fraxinus ornus and Acer freemanii ‘Armstrong’.

Trees in dissolved concrete slabs

The 130 by 150 meter square is located opposite the landscaped area. The seemingly huge area and the backdrop of a preserved longwall framework from Shaft 2 and the former winding tower of Shaft 1 with a viewing platform at a height of 70 meters presented the landscape architects with challenges when designing the square. Larger tree species were therefore planted there, such as Alnus spaethii, Quercus cerris, Ostria carpinifolia, Metasequoia glyptostroboides and Paulownia tomentosa. These “sprout” from a disintegrated concrete slab and gravel surface, which is divided into strips and islands and integrates the two remaining structures.

Mining and coal deliberately barely picked up on

The square now consists of smooth concrete slabs in gray and – one layer deeper – gravel turf in green around the colliery towers. In addition to the shade of the trees, a water feature with water fountains provides cooling in the square. For the furniture, bbzl took its cue from the typical green of the painted strut framework of Shaft 2. The rather delicate-looking metal benches, stools and chairs, arranged in seating groups across the square, are painted in different shades ranging from fir green to may green.

There was also an educational gallery on the garden show grounds, which allowed visitors to experience the history of mining in Kamp-Lintfort up close. Due to the large presence of mining and coal, bbzl deliberately did not take up the motif of mining and coal in a striking way in its design. However, the playgrounds, which were not designed by bbzl, also have small winding towers for climbing. Kamp-Lintfort is still not completely mining-free.

Also interesting: Here you can find the articles on the Ingolstadt State Garden Show and the Überlingen State Garden Show.