For 150 years, the Japanese Acer palmatum was allowed to hold its finely fanned, tapered leaves in the wind in front of the Zurich Congress House and stretch twelve meters into the sky, then the Japanese maple should go, renovation work. After more than a hundred years, no one wanted the horse chestnut either, although it had marked the center of the village of Schänis in the canton of St. Gallen for so long. The traces of the clips that people once used to affix their posters and leaflets can still be seen on the dark bark today. In 2009 a wider road was planned and the tree should be cut down.
Today the two very old people stand on the shores of Lake Zurich, like the flower ash from 1935 or the forest pine that began to grow in the mid-1940s. In Rapperswil, more than 50 trees have found a new home, the deforestation of which has long been sealed: the ironwood tree from 1895, the gray shrub juniper from 1943, the red split maple from 1881, the ornamental apple, the tulip magnolia, culture -Plum. They are allowed to grow on a 75,000 square meter site, where landscape architect Enzo Enea has built their own tree museum for them, next to his tree nursery, the company’s main building and an impressive showroom.
“Trees are never where you need them.”
“Trees are never where you need them,” says Enzo Enea at the end of July while walking around the site. “But you can’t buy time like health.” That is why he has specialized in old trees that have to give way to a conversion, extension, new building and need a new home. Asylum is often found in exclusive locations: You don’t plant a sparse tree in front of the Bulgari Hotel in Beijing in the hope that it will grow quickly to match the opulent design of the building. “A tree is only exciting and has character when it is 80 or 100 years old,” says the man with the graying wave on his head. Therefore, in front of the luxury hotel, which opened in 2017, are 300-year-old pine trees that previously grew in the forests several hours by train from the Chinese capital; their barks were already marked for the forest workers. They waited for the saw until one day Enzo Enea stood in front of them and had it dug up.
The 57-year-old does not reveal any roots just out of pure love for nature. Enea is one of the most famous landscape architects in the world, with offices in Miami, New York and Zurich, who works with top architecture firms such as David Chipperfield, Rem Koolhaas, Tadao Andō and Sir Norman Foster. His customers include Prince Charles and Tina Turner and companies such as Apple, Rolex and FIFA. So those who have more than enough money to buy a few trees. But no time to watch them grow.
In this private garden created by Enea in Feusisberg, Switzerland, it is easy to endure.
(Photo: Enea Landscape Architecture)
They say you don’t transplant an old tree. To do it anyway is a great art. Actually, you should reflect the complete radius of all branches onto the ground and then carefully dig up the roots over this entire area. But that will be too difficult, such a colossus cannot be transported. That is why Enea’s tree specialists dig up all the roots by hand, wash off the earth and thus expose the base. “Then there is a special root cut that we have been working on for twenty years to this day, so that the tree can draw water relatively quickly, does not suffer any damage and does not resent the digging.” The Swiss don’t want to reveal exactly how he does it, trade secret. However, not every tree can be moved, despite special techniques. Deep roots like walnut trees are difficult to get out of the ground, they dig up to ten meters into the ground.
The number of saved trees is not enough for his numerous customers who want an old maple. That’s why his team drives to tree nurseries all over Europe to find the specimens that fit the respective projects. He is also often on the road himself. Thanks to his photographic memory, he can remember trees well, he says confidently. In order to find the right tree for the respective location, the soil of the new property to be created, the average temperatures, wind, shade, hours of sunshine are first analyzed, only then does Enea take care that the entire garden looks good. In doing so, he focuses less on romantic wilderness, which is allowed to change colors over the year like a teenager’s outfit, but rather on clear lines, perfect visual axes, separated lawns, precisely trimmed trees and bushes. Everything has to fit together, the red-beige of the reed fronds can also be found in the garden chairs.
Enea got his first job on Maui.
When Enzo Enea walks through his tree museum, the little boy in him sometimes flashes, who grew up on this property. He then speaks enthusiastically about his favorites, the Japanese maple trees, which he has been collecting for 30 years, or points to the bald cypresses, which need an enormous amount of water and thus help him to be able to plant different trees on his marshy lake property. “They draw 800 to 1000 liters of water every day, per tree!” He says proudly like a father watching his child play the piano.
Enea’s father made hewn pots, stairs and window sills on the premises in Rapperswil. The son also learned a trade and became a mold maker in order to be able to produce negatives for dentistry or watchmakers. But despite his affinity for technology, he wanted more nature in his job, after all, he had already fallen in love with the peach trees with their juicy fruits in Grandpa’s garden in Emilia-Romagna. So Enea took courses in landscape architecture at Chelsea Physic Garden in London and then went to Maui. He actually wanted to surf, but instead got his first job there: a tropical garden.
The 57-year-old Swiss sometimes rejects customer requests if the idea doesn’t fit the site.
(Photo: Enea Landscape Architecture)
Back in Switzerland, the father wanted to know whether he would take over his stonemasonry. Good idea, thought the son, and since then he has been relying on luxury gardens instead of window sills. Over the decades he has refined his motto “unite nature and architecture with the spirit of the place” and shows the results in Geneva, Abu Dhabi and Bogotá. However, Enea does not meet every customer request. “I’m not building a Japanese garden with a red bridge on Lake Zurich, it just doesn’t fit.” In addition, a tree should not have to travel too far. Before each meeting with a customer, Enea marches into the local botanical gardens to find out what is growing where. Whether in Beijing, Miami or Munich, where he is currently building the “Karl” together with David Chipperfield, a large office complex near the main train station in which Apple is planning its new location.
He draws boundaries if only profit is to be made with old trees. For example, when old olives are to be bought from farmers for little money and put next to a fancy pool at a profit. Nor does he want to bring a tree to a place where it is certain to perish after a few years. He has the rubble lifted out of the ground and filled with fresh earth before he plants it so that the tree has a chance at all. Once or twice a year, he sends his team to all of the gardens he has created to check the condition of the plants.
He has long been relying on more heat-resistant trees.
In the meantime, people keep coming to Enea who know about old trees that are about to be felled. “That is very important, after all, you would have to plant 2,000 new trees for the same amount of oxygen that a hundred-year-old linden tree produces.” The climate crisis has long since changed his work, for many years he has been relying on more resistant trees such as the field maple, the ironwood tree, the Japanese pagoda tree or the silver linden because they are more robust and more heat-tolerant. “We try to cushion architecture by creating a microclimate on site that benefits people and nature in the immediate vicinity,” says Enea. “We look very carefully to see whether a place for a tree is worth living in, or whether too much glass around the outside would give it too much solar radiation.” After all, his most important job is to respect nature.
Across from the imposing showroom are a few “mushrooms” by artist Sylvie Fleury.
(Photo: Enea Landscape Architecture)
Being a little crazy is part of it: he had the 700 square meter showroom in Rapperswil for his garden furniture, which he now also produces, built around a 25 meter long dining table. The Kauri wood used from New Zealand is said to be 40,000 years old and was vacuumed in a bog. “The table was there first. Then you just build around it,” says Enea pragmatically. That’s exactly how he did it with his house: first a dining table made of driftwood, then the rest.
He is currently trying to reorganize the landscape architecture profession. “If you only work from the inside out, the design always stops at the window pane,” says Enea. He wants to do it the other way around and view the entire property as living space. “We go through with this completely, so even the color of the pillows has to match the flowers in front of the window.” In spite of everything, Enea seems down-to-earth, for example when you ask him whether he has also learned something from trees. “To stand firm,” he says quickly. The tree is always outside, in rain, snow, heat, but it remains steadfastly in the same place for hundreds of years. At least until Enzo Enea carefully digs it up.