Beautiful Ornamental Plants Change The Face Of The City

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

An oasis in the stone jungle - how beautiful ornamental plants change the face of the city

They say: it is not a place that paints a person, but a person a place. Indeed, you can simply do your job responsibly, or you can approach it creatively, creating comfort and beauty in your workplace.

There are many different cafes in our city now, and in spring they grow like mushrooms. To attract the attention of visitors, the employees of these establishments try to beautifully design the signboard, the interior and the entrance to the cafe. Alas, there are very few lawns and trees in the center of the city due to dense buildings - only stone jungle. Therefore, the appearance of any green corner is perceived here as an oasis in the desert.

But there is a cafe in our city where it is believed that the theater begins not with a coat rack, but with the front door. Walking to and from work along the noisy Gorokhovaya street, where bustle reigns, buildings are piled up with a dense wall, an endless stream of cars and people rushing about on business flows, I always hold back my step at the same place - near the Zoom cafe, the front entrance of which stands out as a bright spot among this jungle of stone.

The space in front of the entrance to the cafe is not very large, but here you can always see colorful compositions made up of flowers and ornamental plants, replacing each other during the season, from early spring to late autumn. And even in winter, the interior at the entrance is decorated with winter New Year's compositions from coniferous bushes.

There are long boxes along the windows of the cafe, in which the compositions are constantly changing. Above the windows, on the ledges between the first and second floors, flower boxes are also fixed, between which potted plants and small original lanterns flaunt. The entrance to the cafe is decorated with ampelous plants (multi-colored petunias, lobelia, geraniums, ivy) in beautiful pots. Each step is decorated with beautiful ceramic pots with flowering garden plants - tuberous begonias, carnations, lobelias, vervains, as well as decorative indoor plants with bright leaves - coleus.

Plants are not just randomly planted in flower boxes, but beautiful compositions are created from them, which are constantly updated. For example, in the spring, primroses, hyacinths, tulips, daffodils, daisies, incense and saxifrage delight passers-by. Ampelous crops act as constantly growing green plants: ivy, maiden grapes, bacopa. Of the tall green tapeworms, special attention is attracted by the kochia, which stands out in the spring-summer period as a light green color, and with the arrival of autumn it becomes burgundy-red.

The plants blooming in spring are being replaced by annuals: Chinese carnation, viola, marigolds, ageratum, petunias, cellosia pinnate, purslane, annual phlox, salvia, levkoi, marsh chrysanthemum, gazania. In autumn, faded plants are replaced by chrysanthemums, perennial asters, and colorful ornamental cabbage. Potted plants are also changing. At first, cyclamens burn with a bright flame, later barberry with golden leaves, Erica and even small oaks appear.

In the late autumn period, small conifers appear in the boxes: thuja, common and creeping junipers, heather and erica, on which New Year's garlands are attached. Small lanterns are added to the boxes. Such compositions look very beautiful in the dark, especially when the conifers are covered with snow. Of course, by the spring, these plants die due to freezing of the soil in the boxes, but, as they say, beauty requires sacrifice. And the entrance to the cafe really looks very nice.

Of course, the creation of such picturesque compositions requires time and large material costs, but the employees of this cafe do not skimp on them. For several years now, passing by this cafe, I never cease to be amazed at the imaginations of girls who, as artists, create paintings from different plants. Anna Tsvetkova and Maria Revzina have skillful and caring hands and excellent taste. They are the ones who start every morning with caring for the flower garden: water the plants, remove faded flowers, loosen the soil in boxes or renew plantings.

This urban oasis attracts the glances of passers-by, who, I noticed, are trying to cross to this side of the street in order to then walk past a beautiful flowering corner by the cafe. Many even stop here to take pictures. So I always, going to work, also pass by this beauty, which charges with positive energy in the morning for the whole working day, because there are few places in the city center that you can find such green and flowering corners. There are other small cafes nearby, whose workers are trying to somehow match the landscape leader: boxes with flowers have already begun to appear on their windowsills.

And I, and many other citizens, and guests of our big city are grateful to the hardworking girls from the cafe on Gorokhovaya for creating a small piece of beauty on a noisy street. And if their initiative was supported by employees of not only cafes, but also shops, ateliers and other numerous enterprises in other districts of St. Petersburg, the beloved city would be prettier!

Olga Rubtsova,

Candidate of Geographical Sciences St. Petersburg Photo by the author