A style of the Garden of Eden | EUROtoday

Der Gärtner gärtnert, und der Gemüsebauer baut Gemüse an. So weit, so gut und so banal – es sei denn, es ist von der Insel Reichenau die Rede, dann wird die Sache komplizierter. 41 Landwirte bauen heute auf dem größten Eiland im Bodensee Feldfrüchte von höchster Qualität an, ernten gemeinsam mit ihren drei Schwestergärtnereien auf dem Festland 14.000 Tonnen Gemüse pro Jahr und führen damit eine stolze Tradition fort, die vor sagenhaften 1300 Jahren begann. Doch sie bezeichnen sich selbst nicht als Gemüsebauern, sondern als Gärtner, weil ihnen dieser Begriff für ihr Tun als der passendste und nobelste erscheint: Sie sind keine Ackerleute, die Furchen in die Scholle ziehen, sondern die Hüter der Erde, die uns einen Vorgeschmack auf den Garten Eden geben.

Im Jahr 724 gründete der Wanderbischof Pirmin auf der Reichenau eine Benediktinerabtei, deren Mönche gemäß dem Ordensmotto „Ora et labora“ den Allmächtigen priesen, prachtvolle Bücher illuminierten und die fruchtbare Erde bestellten. Das machten sie so gründlich und erfolgreich, dass schon Mitte des neunten Jahrhunderts ihr damaliger Abt Walahfrid Strabo seinen „Hortulus“ verfassen konnte, ein Lehrgedicht über den klösterlichen Gartenbau, das Aufzucht, Besonderheit und Verwendung von 24 Nutzpflanzen minutiös beschreibt. Der „Hortulus“ wurde schnell zu einem der bedeutendsten Werke über die mittelalterliche Landwirtschaft und die Klosterinsel Reichenau zur Wiege des Gemüseanbaus in Deutschland – eine erstaunliche Kombination aus Gottesdienst, Malerei und Feldarbeit, die von der UNESCO im Jahr 2000 zum Weltkulturerbe der Menschheit geadelt wurde.

Better circumstances for rising greens than on the 450-hectare island can hardly be discovered wherever in Germany, with Lake Constance being the decisive issue. In summer time it cools the island, in winter it warms it and ensures that the temperature on Reichenau is usually two levels larger than on the mainland. It can be an inexhaustible supply of irrigation with consuming water high quality and ensures that storms from the west cut up in entrance of the shore and are diverted to either side of the island. The many hours of sunshine in Germany's southernmost vegetable rising space assure an earlier harvest than within the Palatinate or Knoblauchsland, for instance, and the free moraine soils do the remaining for gardeners' happiness: they’re filled with minerals, so little fertilization is required, and they’re so ethereal that they dry shortly after rainfall and might be labored with heavy equipment sooner than the fields on the mainland. The solely draw back for the vegetable gardeners of Reichenau are the various foggy days in autumn and winter, messengers of melancholy from Lake Constance.

Almost all gardeners are organized in a cooperative that acts as guardian of the Reichenau vegetable model and advantages vastly from the truth that the lettuce, lamb's lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers from the island are beneath the particular safety of a geographical indication of origin from the European Union. This vegetable is so useful that the gardeners survive on a mean farm measurement of only one to 2 and a half hectares and might typically promote their crops for twice as a lot because the competing items from Spain or North Africa – proud costs that not solely gourmets are comfortable to pay, but additionally prime cooks like Dirk Hoberg from the two-star restaurant “Ophelia” in close by Konstanz, who will get nearly all of his greens from the island.

But the vegetable backyard of Eden just isn’t solely shrouded in winter mist of melancholy, but additionally within the shadows of elementary conflicts of curiosity. Since it was declared a World Heritage website, tourism has performed an more and more essential function and made life tough for the gardeners. 1,000,000 day guests and 200,000 in a single day visitors a 12 months are robust arguments for maintaining the farmers in verify. The development of latest greenhouses, through which most cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce develop, is nearly by no means permitted, panorama conservation areas stop the fields from being expanded, and the authorities would like to not see any hint of agriculture close by of the three Reichenau monastery church buildings. All of those restrictions have led to the variety of gardeners on Reichenau falling from 180 to 41 prior to now 30 years, and with out the sister backyard facilities on the mainland with their 120 hectares of greenhouse house, issues would look even bleaker.

Passionate gardeners like Stefanie Wehrle aren’t discouraged by this. She studied horticulture on the University of Weihenstephan and, regardless of all adversities, determined to proceed the household gardening enterprise within the third era. She now grows peppers, snake cucumbers, vine tomatoes and San Marzano tomatoes beneath glass on two hectares of land, and can be experimenting with Pimientos de Padrón, and is proud to make her contribution to the world cultural heritage. “Being a gardener on Reichenau is something very special, because we are not only part of humanity's heritage because of the monasteries, but also because of the tradition of growing vegetables,” says Wehrle, who – our agricultural perversion coverage is so absurd – as a small-scale farmer, in contrast to the agricultural firms, has to get by with none EU subsidies.

Fortunately, there are nonetheless indomitable gardeners like Stefanie Wehrle who maintain the Reichenau murals alive. As lovely because the three Ottonian-Romanesque church buildings are, particularly the cathedral with its huge open beams within the form of an inverted ship's hull and the two-tone horseshoe arches within the Visigothic type, they’d be interchangeable with out the 25 hectares of vineyards from which amazingly wealthy vegetation are pressed, and above all with out the 140 hectares of vegetable gardens that cowl a 3rd of an island, the likes of which can’t be discovered wherever else on earth.