Teaching respect for nature and its multi-fold expressions of beauty is something important. One way to do so is providing spaces like an Arboretum, a kind of botanical garden containing living collections of woody plants for purposes of science, education or just rest and recreation. In Switzerland, the Swiss National Arboretum is located in the Aubonne valley between Geneva and Lausanne, close to the Lake of Geneva. A year ago, my wife had been there for a seminar on Earth Energies and told me about its beauty. So a week ago we decided to go there with our eldest son on the occasion of his 24th birthday.
The Arboretum covers an area of about 2 square kilometres, and you can walk there for hours. We did two walks, with a lunch pause in a Florentine restaurant in between. There are different areas of different ecotypes: of north-west America, with giant sequoias etc.; of Japan, with cherry birches; of old orchards or other collections, like cedars from Africa or Patagonian conifers. Here are some impressions of our tour.
