(L-R) Serge Wilmes, VdL council; Jean-Paul Schaaf, Mayor of Ettelbruck; Claude Haagen, Luxembourg Minister of Agriculture, Viticulture and Rural Development; Lydie Polfer, Mayor of the City of Luxembourg; Ann Muller, General Coordinator of LUGA;
Credit: Otilia Dragan/Chronicle.lu
On the afternoon of Wednesday 24 May 2023, the association Luxembourg Urban Garden (LUGA) held a press conference about its upcoming programme for the “Semer en 2023, récolter en 2025” (sowing in 2023, harvesting in 2025) project, which consists in a series of free innovative open-air exhibitions, urban gardens and events.
The Luxembourg Minister of Agriculture, Viticulture and Rural Development, Claude Haagen, the Mayor of the City of Luxembourg, Lydie Polfer, the Mayor of Ettelbruck, Jean-Paul Schaaf, and the general coordinator of LUGA, Ann Muller, presented the LUGA concept and master plan for this upcoming project.
From May to October 2025, LUGA will organise open-air exhibitions with various activities and educational but also inspiring sites spread across the capital city. “Making the invisible visible is the project’s red thread,” Ann Muller said, detailing the interdisciplinary offer of this six-month project.
There are sixteen overarching themes and subjects that LUGA wants to tackle in the context of this exhibition: environmental science; agriculture; horticulture; viticulture; alimentation; biodiversity; urban ecology; cultural patrimony; the arts; culture; well-being; sustainable development; the circular economy; social inclusion; technological innovation and tourism.
The project aims to show what is unseen through the use of the five senses, Ann Muller noted. There will be five sites in Luxembourg City that will be meaningfully connected but that can also be explored separately: the Alzette Valley (interaction and exchange), the Municipal Park (marvelling and sharing), the Pétrusse Valley (inspiration and innovation), Luxembourg-Kirchberg (reinventing tomorrow’s city) and Nordstad, the north-central Luxembourg area (cultivating and experimenting). Three temporary pavilions will be erected to guide the visitors and offer refreshments and activities.
LUGA made two international appeals for innovative projects. Firstly, ten artistic regenerative gardens will be planted and designed by landscape designers and artists along the Alzette and the Pétrusse Valley and secondly, young designers, gardeners and landscape architects were invited to create ten gardens in the Pétrusse Valley, in order to scientifically reframe ecological matters in this area under current ecological restauration.
Preparations (i.e. sowing the seeds) for the “sowing in 2023, harvesting in 2025” project already start this year, with the first four events kicking off on Sunday 4 June 2023, with piano concerts in a rose garden, followed by the placement in the cellar of the LUGA sparkling wine (Millésime Crémant LUGA). This sparkling wine production will be kept in the Kinnekswiss military galleries whose temperature and atmospheric pressure are expected to ensure the production will be ready for tasting in 2025. Next, there will be “Narrative Promenades” organised in several gardens, from 1 July to 23 September 2023, and the final project will be a series of conferences from October 2023 to April 2024, in the context of the “All You Can Eat” exhibition at the Lëtzebuerg City Museum.
