German artist Anne Schwalbe is fascinated with flowers. And elderberries and nettles and meadows and light. She photographs them all in her 2-and-a-half acre garden. Her house, an old cottage that once belonged to a stove maker, is near the river Elbe in the Sachsen-Anhalt region between Berlin and Hamburg.
Admittedly, Anne has done more to the garden than she has to the house with planting and cultivating on constant rotation. When she bought the property, she had three untended poplar trees removed (to bring in the sunlight) and enlisted friends and family to tend to things like “leftover bicycles and stuff underneath a blackberry hedge,” she says. Anne splits her time between Berlin and the cottage (it doesn’t yet have hot water or a modern toilet), but plans to one day live there full-time. For now, she comes when she can to photograph the garden, host dinners, and battle the “slug storm.”
Photography by Claire Cottrell for Gardenista.
![Here is Anne with her pink roses. Over the past year excess rain brought the slugs who go for her dahlias, kale, and pumpkins: “Almost everything I planted in spring,” she says. “If you can’t be there all the time to collect the slugs every evening, they’ll eat almost everything.” Except for her roses and sage, so she’s been planting more of those.](https://media.gardenista.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/anne-schwalbe-garden-germany-claire-cottrell-2-733x488.jpg)
![The orange flowers are “zinnias that survived the slug storm.” The wispy purple flowers are Mauritanian Mallow, part of an organic seed mixture to attract bees called Schoenhagener Bienenweidemischung that she orders from Dreschflegal Shop.](https://media.gardenista.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/anne-schwalbe-garden-germany-claire-cottrell-3-733x1071.jpg)
![Yellow goldenrod starts blooming in September. The garden, says Anne, is “like a wild beautiful mess, but that beautiful mess is very good for taking photos.” Some of her past series are titled things like Wiese (meadow), Garten (garden), and Wiese Garten Baum (meadow garden tree). Her most recent photography book, There is a white horse in my garden, Anne published to support the restoration of her cottage.](https://media.gardenista.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/anne-schwalbe-garden-germany-claire-cottrell-4-733x488.jpg)
![The exterior of the cottage. For a look inside see the story on Remodelista.](https://media.gardenista.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/anne-schwalbe-country-house-germany-claire-cottrell-1-733x1063.jpg)
![This past summer, Anne had to tear down the shed where a composting toilet had been (there isn’t one inside the main house) so she converted an existing storage shed into an outhouse and painted the door pale blue-gray.](https://media.gardenista.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/anne-schwalbe-garden-germany-claire-cottrell-6-733x994.jpg)
![In the shed is a composting toilet that Anne designed. She built the housing of bricks and covered it in green-painted wood. The top is made from repurposed bead board with a conventional toilet seat. Wood chips are stored in the enamel bucket to the right. They’re used instead of water for the composting toilet.](https://media.gardenista.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/anne-schwalbe-outhouse-shed-733x1100.jpg)
![A traditional hands-washing system designed from vintage German enamelware.](https://media.gardenista.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/anne-schwalbe-garden-germany-claire-cottrell-7-733x1071.jpg)
![Before photography, Anne studied German literature and culture. Little books are tucked into corners throughout the cottage and shed.](https://media.gardenista.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/anne-schwalbe-garden-germany-claire-cottrell-8-733x1029.jpg)
![An old armoire found in the storage shed already painted the unusual russet-orange color.](https://media.gardenista.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/anne-schwalbe-garden-germany-claire-cottrell-9-733x1088.jpg)
![When Anne moved in, she planted an apple tree, a gingko tree, herbs, and roses. Now, she\2\17;s strategizing for next season: more fruit trees and willow (for the wood-fired stove).](https://media.gardenista.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/anne-schwalbe-garden-germany-claire-cottrell-5-733x1016.jpg)
N.B.: This post has been updated with new links; it was first published October 2017.
For more on Anne and her photography, visit her portfolio, check out her Instagram feed (@anneschwalbe), or go to Galerie f 5,6 in Munich where she’s represented.
For more on gardens in Germany, see:
- 10 Garden Ideas to Steal from Germany
- War of the Roses: Preserving Germany’s Ancient Blooms
- Garden Visit: At Home with Katrin Scharl in Brandenburg, Germany
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