Tjørnagergård

Facts

Garden centre blossoms between city and country

By Poul Sverrild, Museumschef, mag. art. (3 stories)

Tjørnagergård is an old nursery in Vallensbæk southwest of Copenhagen. Fruit and vegetables from nurseries like this near the capital were important ingredients that helped the industrial city to grow. From the mid-1800s, agricultural land near Copenhagen was used for nurseries. But the city flourished and cars made transporting the day's harvest to Grønttorv market in Copenhagen easier. The nurseries therefore moved further and further out of the city. Danish nurseries from the oldest and up to the 1940s were based on Dutch principles. But then the oil crisis hit in 1973. Heating greenhouses suddenly became very expensive. The second oil crisis in 1977 was the final straw. Very few nurseries now remain in the Greater Copenhagen area.

Partly a public place

Selected entry

Fruit and vegetables fade out of the city

Story written by Poul Sverrild

Time / Periode 1925 1997

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Yes, it's a sad sight," says retired gardening consultant Niels Peter Holmenlund about the Tjørnagergård nursery by Vallensbæk motorway. The old farm became a nursery in 1925. The greenhouses produced cucumbers and a brand new vegetable called the aubergine. Cabbages and strawberries grew in the open in the rich soil. Later, the nursery produced cabbages and celery for export, followed by tomatoes and chrysanthemums. From 1980, the farm thrived as an efficient pot plant nursery with azaleas and begonias. But in the 1990s, the green wave ran aground. Now the sad remains of the nursery illustrate the fate of the nurseries around Copenhagen during the past generation. The main building illustrates the archetypal tale of how farms near Copenhagen developed into nurseries, only to be swallowed up by the concrete jungle. "