In the densely built-up district of Schöneberg, a Shell gas station from the 1950s erected on a previously bombed out wasteland had been preserved. The client envisioned a garden with the motto “three friends of winter.” The inspiration was an exhibition in November 2005 dedicated to the three emperors of the Qing dynasty (1662–1795), whose pet project was garden design. The pines (whose crowns protectively bear snow), bamboo (whose evergreen embodies eternal life), and ornamental cherry trees (the first tree to also start blooming in the winter) are regarded as the “three friends” of garden designers.

We created a shade-giving framework of trees on the site with large pine trees and ornamental cherry trees with multiple trunks. Plantings of bamboo along the two-meter-high walls provide an additional privacy screen toward the street and neighboring properties. White-blooming desert candles, bellflowers, yellow ragwort, foxglove, and lilies are interspersed in the bamboo. The blooming plants are found again on islands of perennials in the central gravel surface, supplemented by columbine, willow-leaf sunflowers, Phlomis, and Indian feather. The gravel-covered area is allowed to become overgrown with the seed-bearing perennials. The preserved, concrete-surfaced area with the protective roof of the former gas pumps is situated inside it as a fortified island and remains free of plants.

The garden thus forms a magical oasis in the center of the city. Raging outside of the enclosing walls one finds the special Berlin combination of a regularly clattering elevated railway, a heavily frequented six-lane road, passersby rushing by, waiting prostitutes, and a parking lot for tourist busses.