Zoöp Observations: Path structureZoöp Observations: Path structure

I Mowed the garden for the first time this year with my brand new brush cutter. My intention is to keep the vegetation along the gravel paths low, so that the formal walking route through The New Garden remains clearly visible. Before I can actually mow these strips of approximately 30 centimeter wide, they have to be cleared of rubble stones and concrete debris. The gravel paths and curbs have a foundation of crushed concrete and rubble stones (a coarse mixture called repac). Since this foundation is slightly wider than the paths themselves, there's a good chance that the brushcutter's blade might hit a piece of concrete or stone and be damaged as a result.

After raking and collecting the coarsest pieces of stone and concrete – together about 120 kilos – the strips along the gravel paths were mowed. The clippings mainly consist of saltbush (Atriplex nitens) and rapeseed (Brassica napus), plants that often colonize fallow land, and which have benefited from the fact that The New Garden has been overhauled for about three quarters of a year. Saltbush and rapeseed seem not to have suffered at all from the great spring drought that hit the Netherlands.

In addition to the strips along the formal gravel paths, some unpaved elephant paths have also been mowed: one grassy path that runs from the fire escape to the gravel path, and a similar path that leads from the parking lots on the Jongkindstraat to the gravel path. I resisted the urge to mow the high-growing grass along the parking lots on the Jongkindstraat as well. Since 2020 this grass strip has served as a foraging and hiding area for several rabbits, whose burrow is somewhere in the gardens of the white villas on the Jongkindstraat and Museumpark. The rabbits have also tried to dig holes in The New Garden, but due to all the heavy equipment moving soil around, the top layer of the soil has become so hard that, for the time being, there is no way for them to get through.