The trees breathe in

It is a story of coincidences, coincidences and the tireless commitment of a loyal friend and neighbour, which the lord of the castle Severin Hoensbroech tells here. All this made it possible to have a functioning irrigation system in the Türnicher Schlosspark as quickly as possible.

A total of fourteen large trees have arrived in the park as a result of the exceptional drought of the last two summers, explains Severin Hoensbroech.First, the beech trees fell, the trees literally "suffocated" under the compaction with dry soil, which would affect their strongly pronounced fine roots. Experts speak of "complex diseases", i.e. a number of fungi, viruses, pests, which are favored by the persistent drought that destroyed trees.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Fortunately for the historic park, which has become a biotope with biodiversity and rare species such as black woodpecker and Bechstein bat, this summer has not yet turned out to be the dreaded drought summer, Severin Hoensbroech said.

An irrigation system had to be put in place to protect the park from further damage, he said earlier this year on the castle's "You Tube" channel, and asked for help. During a walk with his father, Count Godehard von und zu Hoensbroech, he alerted him to a landmark on the side of the road.

Droughts as an impact of climate change, Count Godehard predicted from and to Hoensbroech as early as the mid-1980s

This was one of the markings for the inlets and outlets of a pipe system for irrigation of the park, a system that he had already installed in the mid-1980s during a redesign of the park with the landscape architect Berthold Lenderz, suddenly occurred to the count.The consequences of the expected climate change with its drought periods had already been foreseen at that time.

He then rolled up old file folders and really found a plan for the pipe system, Severin Hoensbroech says.Even the unknown author of the plan, "my father's handwriting is not," had already noted in 1988, only a few years after the construction of the plant, his difficulties in finding the connecting pieces in the parking floor.And so it was for him. A neighbour, a loyal friend of the count's castle complex, rushed to his aid with a metal detector.

In many, many hours of searching, he was able to discover all two inputs and 14 outputs under thick humus layers of the last 30 years during the Corona Lockdown.

A real friend of the park monument spent many hours searching for the taps with the metal detector

Hoensbroech added that the neighbor's volunteer work rounded off something like a happy ending. During a revision of the fire-fighting facilities in the neighbouring residential park, a pressure amplifier and many hundreds of metres of so-called C-hoses were exchanged for new things, and the old was beavailabled to the castle park as a gift at the right time.

Hoses are full and the necessary pressure amplifier to be able to tap water from the much more distant Mühlbach, instead of from the nearby moat originally intended for this purpose, which meanwhile turned out to be "too muddy".

Fortunately, the pipe system built in the 1980s proved to be dense.With clutch pieces and water cannons, which he bought with the help of the association and some donors, the park was watered for almost two weeks in the dry April. "The effect was felt, it was like breathing in the vegetation," says Severin Hoensbroech.It would be good to note that there are people "who like the castle park and stand up for the monument".

Now he hopes to establish a "honorary force" to build the "water games" as needed "with some expertise" and to have a sponsor who donates a trailer on which the pump, pressure amplifiers and C-tubes have their permanent place.