Dig It! Temporary Shade in the garden

Dig It!

Monday, 7 September 2026 - 4 minutes

Hester Macdonald is joined by Chiara La Rosa, a landscape architect for the City of Geneva, to talk about an unusual experiment in a small inner-city park.

For the second summer running, Parc Baud-Bovy has been given a set of seating and planting modules built from Swiss railway transport pallets and scaffolding poles, with shade awnings and zip ties doing much of the rest.

Chiara explains where the idea came from and how the modules work in practice, while Hester looks at the planting itself — begonias, sweet potato vines, rudbeckias and morning glory for the climbers — all chosen to cope with a hot spot and kept going by watering three times a day.

The modules stay in place until October.

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