Sachsen

With an electric bus full of motivated experts, we visited beautiful, sometimes fascinatingly detailed natural play areas and nursery grounds.

© Sigrid Böttcher-Steeb

We went into great technical detail and - as always - there was a buzz at the facilities, during the bus rides and at the final picnic in a lively exchange of expertise.

It was again very hot summer weather of almost 30 degrees, so we were able to experience and test the heat suitability of the facilities we visited "live". All of the facilities passed this "climate check" very well - thanks to the numerous shrubs, large trees, green zones and, in some cases, awnings! At the Südpark forest playground, the forest-like surroundings had a particularly cooling effect, as the still young trees and shrubs on the playground, which only opened a year ago, still have to develop naturally in order to achieve a forest character in the playground itself...

The bus was full - even participants from Kassel and Munich came and combined the excursion with a weekend in Dresden. When asked, we were told that many now regularly check the bdla Saxony website for events.

This year, there was a particularly diverse mix of daycare providers, developers, Stesad, LfULG (Garden Academy) as well as landscape architects and young employees from planning offices. One participant came from a nature conservation planning office and was looking to discuss the topic of species and biotope protection in near-natural play areas. Our attention was drawn to nesting aids on new daycare buildings (which we found everywhere, in one case integrated into the brick façade with special bricks in a fascinatingly clever and barely visible way). We discussed how small stone, wall and wooden structures can enrich the grounds in terms of promoting species conservation, but also as added value for the children's experience of nature and nature education, so that children can experience sand lizards, beetles and other insects up close and at the same time nature conservation concerns and licensing requirements are taken into account.

further insights and highlights:

• Intensive coordination of repair and redesign measures with the daycare center management and the daycare center team is the basis for the planning and construction process.
• Refurbishment of existing buildings is "building on tiptoe" - you need specialist building contractors who are interested in small-scale work with a lot of manual labor and small equipment while the daycare center is in operation.
• The companies in the example projects were happy to work on the daycare centers as "heroes of the construction site". Galabau employees later came to the kindergarten with their wives and families to proudly show off the great project (on which they had worked)
• Lead-contaminated soil and soil replacement drove up the construction costs of a project to EUR 1 million
• Construction costs and thus also architects' fees were rather low for the 2 renovation projects: EUR 130,000 and EUR 245,000 respectively - the resulting HOAI-based fees did not even come close to reflecting the small-scale effort and the extended construction supervision in several construction phases - more money can be earned with large new buildings, standard equipment, compact construction methods... -In addition to idealism, an objective accounting of special expenses must also be enforced.
• There are also facilities that can live with slightly poisonous plants in the embankments (e.g. creeping honeysuckle and dwarf privet), with the statement: "We already have rhododendrons, spring onion plants, oak trees with regular occurrences of oak processionary spiders here anyway - we live in nature and have to deal with it together with the children, teach the children what is not edible!". Eileen Hornbostel added: "The daycare centers do not have a CONSUMPTION MISSION but an EDUCATION MISSION - it is about teaching the children about the diversity of plants, including non-edible plants with (weakly) poisonous components, so that they are best equipped for the future and the world outside!"
• Publication of the Unfallkasse Sachsen brochure: "Suitable plants in daycare centers - list of the Unfallkasse Sachsen"
  also contains (weakly) poisonous plants and refers again to the individual consideration in the individual facilities and planning projects. There should no longer be long lists of prohibited poisonous plants!

All program items of the excursion on the page of the announcement of the bus tour from 23.08.2024.

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