Guided tour with Simeon Guttenhöfer | Admission: 9 euros | Meeting point: 18465 Hugoldsdorf | Dorfstraße 12, Gutshaus

The estate garden in Hugoldsdorf has been used for horticultural purposes for centuries. Before 1945, it was the estate’s private garden. Following the expropriation of the estate owners, the people living in close quarters in the two manor houses – many of whom had been displaced from the East – divided the land into plots. After German reunification in 1989, the house and grounds were abandoned and almost everything became overgrown. When the property was purchased in 2006 with a view to converting it into freehold, the standard-tree orchard, the hedges and old groups of trees were cleared, the garden was made suitable for growing vegetables for personal use, and the park was generously cleared and pruned. Paths were laid out and kept clear, and individual features – a meadow, a tree, a seating area – were tended to.

For the past five years, I, Simeon Guttenhöfer, have been on site and have begun to expand the vegetable garden, work on compost to improve fertility, tend to the orchard and, with two small suckler cows, allow the grounds to become even more open. So far, the focus has not been on economic gain, but on practising: both the art of farming down to the finest detail and working out of a love for the craft. For both, the biodynamic approach is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for me. It links farm work to the cultural work of other local people. What might modern agriculture look like? It needs perspectives that arouse universal interest, so that human labour does not have to be completely replaced by machines, and that allow us to see and experience the natural world not as a lifeless matrix, but as an evolving entity. And it must be practical, manageable and yet still achieve an increase in fertility. These are difficult but essential prerequisites. I reflect on these and experiment with them. You can see how such experimentation manifests itself on the guided tour. – And, of course, let’s not forget the historic grounds and manor house.