Grow the city

• Insect hotels that help solve the housing shortage for insects in the city.
• Honey bees working in the beehive (on site after midsummer)
• Learn to dance like a honey bee on our bee dance floor.
• Pat Sarri and Parre in the museum’s dinosaur garden.
• Try walking on the barefoot path.
• Peek at a mulm holk.
• Get inspired for a meadow.
• See if anyone has moved into the pond.

Why Cultivate the City?

More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, and cities are growing at an ever‑faster pace. We are becoming increasingly disconnected from nature and risk taking its importance for granted. We may not think about how nature provides us with everything from the air we breathe to the food we eat, or how it can benefit children’s health, development, and engagement in caring for the environment.

Different Parts of the Exhibition

What role can an urban farm, an insect hotel, or a barefoot ladder play in the city environment? In the exhibition Cultivate the City we invite nature into the city and show examples of how we can turn gray into green!

The Urban Farm

In the city of Odla there is a thriving urban garden with four different planting beds as well as a balcony garden.

The inspiration for the garden comes from agroforestry, in Swedish “skogsträdgårdsodling,” where cultivation works with nature and seeks to mimic how a forest functions. A forest is a self‑sustaining cycle, and a forest garden strives for the same. The goal is a garden where the only activity besides planting is harvesting.

All plants have one or more functions in a forest garden. Most are edible; some enrich the soil, others provide pest control or are beneficial for bees and other pollinators.

In a forest garden the soil is covered with materials such as straw, leaves, or grass. This protects the soil from drying out, suppresses weeds, and when the plant matter decomposes it adds nutrients and improves soil structure. The soil is not tilled, because disturbing the interaction between plants and fungi—mycorrhiza—would disrupt the symbiosis where fungi extend the plants’ roots and the plants supply sugars to the fungi.

The Dino Garden

In the dino garden you can say hello to the dinosaur youngsters Parre and Sarri, who are our anklebone dinosaurs of the genus Parasaurolophus.

The dino garden features “living fossils,” or close relatives of plants that were common during the time of the dinosaurs. Here grow ginkgo, magnolia, dwarf mountain firs, crocus lilies, callas, and ferns.

During the age of the dinosaurs, the first flowers, the first bees, and butterflies evolved, transferring pollen between flowers in exchange for sweet nectar. Many, many flowering plants developed thanks to this partnership with insects. Today, almost all plants have flowers!

Beehive (available after midsummer)

In our display beehive you can get up close to see how honeybees work together in a colony. Through the plexiglass you can watch how they produce honey for the winter and try to spot which are worker bees and drones. If you're lucky you might catch a glimpse of the queen!

Here you can learn more about honeybees and the other roughly 300 bee species found in Sweden—nature’s own superheroes. Did you know that a third of what we eat has been pollinated by bees? And that a third of bee species are threatened? Take home some inspiration on how you can help a bee.

Insect hotel

In the city it can be difficult for insects to find places to live, lay eggs, take shelter, or overwinter. Therefore we have built an insect hotel where we hope some small guests will crawl in. We also want to attract insects to our urban garden, as they help improve the harvest through pollination and control pests such as aphids. Can you see if anyone has moved in?

A place in the forest

Did you know that we feel better and become less stressed when trees surround us? It doesn’t have to be wild virgin forest to have an effect. Even a garden or a strip of forest behind the schoolyard influences us.

In the forest hill there is a meditative spot in the woods where you can take in nature with all your senses through exercises to see, feel, smell, hear, and taste.

Stockar for nature play and learning

On the farm’s logs you can hang, play, and take the chance to learn a bit more about how dead wood is actually full of life!

Many organisms, such as fungi and insects, live in old trees and logs. A fallen dead spruce can host 350 species of beetles and 200 species of fungi! Unfortunately, there is far too little dead wood today, which makes many species that depend on it become rarer.

In the urban environment, dead wood is, of course, uncommon. How about more logs in the city? For bugs and fungi? For curious little people with a desire to climb?