The Jury of the European Award for Ecological Gardening 2021

1. Zuzana Ambrožová, Ph.D./CZ
Lecturer at Mendel University in Brno, Landscape Architect

Zuzana Ambrožová teaches and supervises courses at the Department of Landscape Architecture of the Mendel University in Brno. She is the author of several professional publications. During her doctoral studies and academic work, she has held several foreign internships (Austria, Germany, Finland, Italy, Thailand, USA, Canada, China etc.). She is the designer of several urban landscape projects and private gardens in collaboration with architects. In her practice, she emphasizes the cooperation and dialogue between the architect and the landscape architect, and has regularly participated in architect competitions. She shows professional enthusiasm in the annual lectures for a lot of European universities and in her radio and television appearances.

2. Daniel Baur/CH
Landscape architect, Lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences of Berne

He is not a paradise planter nor a lawn grower. According to his diploma, Daniel Baur is a graduate engineer in landscape architecture; however, despite having spent several years working in San Francisco, he still has not found a definite answer to what a landscape architect is actually doing. He gained international practical experience working with Peter Walker in Berkeley, USA with Conger Moss Guillard Landscape Architects, San Francisco, as well as with Berchthold.Lenzin Landschaftsarchitekten. As an urban planner and landscape architect, Mr. Baur has been conducting research in the world of everyday life and developing open spaces together with his office BRYUM (an office for urban interventions and landscape architecture, Basle) since 2008 – with the purpose of achieving a sustainable world of life, his focus being on projects in the urban area reaching from designs and interventions to visions and interactions. Holding a chair in area development at the Berne University of Applied Sciences BFH AHB (Architecture), he is teaching integral planning in architecture. Prospective architects learn that cultivated and uncultivated landscapes need to be regarded as a unit. In this respect, what counts is not what you are but rather what you become.

3. Margit Beneš-Oeller/AT
“Natur im Garten“ consultant, landscape designer, environmental educationalist, specialist author

Already during her studies at the Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Margit Beneš-Oeller passionately collaborated on open-space related projects with renowned architecture and landscape architectural offices in Austria and Scandinavia. In her capacity as tutor at the Institute for Landscape Planning, she placed particular importance on passing on her experiences from this practical activity to students. Having served as editor-in-chief of two specialist gardening magazines for several years, her journalistic mediation activities created new interesting challenges for a broad audience. Today, she is active, among others, as a specialist writer on various topics relating to gardening and open spaces, particularly for the initiative “Natur im Garten“ on ecological green. Moreover, in her capacity as a garden consultant and trained environment educationalist, she is also sharing her expert knowledge with old and young people alike. She places particular emphasis on near-natural and creative garden design as well as on the use of herbs and other plants. At the Danube University Krems, she gives lectures on the history of horticulture within the framework of the university course Ecological Garden and Green Area Management. In her leisure time, she puts gardens and plants at the centre of interest during photographical excursions and as a florist.

4. Gideon Corby/GB
Community Gardener, Kingsland Basin Nature Reserve London, Ecologist

Gideon Corby is the chair of the Wildlife Gardeners of Haggerston, an award winning community gardening project located in East London, and award winner of the European Award for Ecological Gardening 2019. Growing up in London, Gideon's childhood explorations of parks and streams engendered a passion for wildlife. Gideon Corby had been teaching animation at the University of Kent but gave that up in 2014 for a brand new start re-educating himself studying a masters in theoretical ecology. Today he works on publicly accessible spaces primarily focused on introducing habitat for wildlife, allowing natural processes look after maintenance as well as improving the public amenity value of green spaces. With the “Regent's Canal Living Waterway” project, London's Regent's Canal has begun to be transformed into a blue-green corridor that will eventually allow wildlife to travel between the Lea Valley and inner London. In this way, the Wildlife Gardeners of Haggerston are creating an urban paradise for nature starting with the Kingsland Basin.

5. Prof. Dr. habil. Jens Gebauer/DE
Horticultural and agricultural scientist

A professor at the Faculty of Life Sciences of the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, Jens Gebauer´s field of teaching and research is “Sustainable Agricultural Production Systems, with particular emphasis on Horticulture“. In a practice-oriented way and on a

cross-faculty basis, he focuses on botanical knowledge, horticultural skills, as well as on interdisciplinary, regional and international cooperation projects; furthermore, he is head of the Tropical Greenhouse, which has teaching and show gardens. A horticultural and agricultural scientist (Humboldt University of Berlin and University College Dublin respectively), he earned his doctorate at the Humboldt University of Berlin in the field of ecophysiology in 2003. As a research assistant at the University of Kassel, he conducted research and lectured on climate change, salinity, nutrient cycles, and carried out botanical field studies on genetic resources with a particular focus on Africa and Asia. On a global scale, he is also active as a Member of the Council for Tropical and Subtropical Agricultural Research, the German Horticultural Society, at the Kompetenzzentrum Gartenbau (Horticulture Competence Centre) and is a member of the editorial teams of specialist journals.

6. Brigitte Goss/DE
Technical Author on Gardening, Moderator, Organic Gardener

A landscape gardener, Brigitte Goss has fully dedicated herself to organic gardening and is herself cultivating a garden that has a “Natur im Garten“ certification. She was employed by the Bavarian Garden Academy for 13 years and works today at a Bavarian authority as an advisor on garden culture for cities and municipalities. Among other things, she coordinates school garden projects, plans ecologically valuable plantings and is involved in the ecological development of communities. She writes articles for various garden magazines and is co-author of the ´Quickfinder Gartenjahr` (´Quickfinder Garden Year`), one of the best-selling gardening books in Germany and author of other garden books for the organic garden. In addition, she is a editorial staff member  of the weekly television programme “MDR-Garten“ and regularly stands in front of the camera of the Central German Broadcasting Corporation (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, MDR) as well as Bavarian television as a garden expert.

7. Prof. Dr. Andrea Zauner-Dungl/AT
Medical specialist for physical medicine & rehabilitation, specialist author

Ms. Zauner-Dungl is chief physician and associate professor for physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University Clinic of Krems and head of the Centre for Chinese Medicine and Complementary Medicine at the Danube University of Krems. For a long time, she has dedicated herself to garden therapy and therapy gardens, as well as to the linkage between the specialised fields of medicine, horticulture/landscape planning and pedagogics/psychology. In accordance with her complementary competences in the field of psychotherapeutic medicine as well as geriatrics, she is supporting the development of garden therapy in these areas. Based on the latter, she developed a university curriculum for garden therapy in collaboration with the Austrian Horticultural Society, which was implemented for the first time at the Danube University of Krems in 2006. This curriculum is being continuously further developed in collaboration with the University College for Agricultural and Environmental Pedagogy of Vienna.

Chairman of the Jury: Karl Ploberger/AT
Author of gardening books, moderator, organic gardener

Karl Ploberger is considered as the “organic gardener of the nation“. As an autodidact, his focus has always been on organic horticulture already since his youth. Meanwhile, he has sold approximately 600,000 copies of his 22 books and annual calendars with the motto “... für intelligente Faule“ (“... for Intelligent Lazy People“). In his hapacity as a journalist, he has also been staging radio and television programmes with the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) on the topic of gardening for 30 years (“Natur im Garten“ is broadcast every Sunday afternoon on ORF 2), attaching great importance to brief and concise explanations which are easy to understand for everyone. He writes articles for numerous daily newspapers and is the editor of the organic gardening magazine “kraut & rüben“ and he is also active on Facebook and Instagram. Free up-to-date tips can be found on his website www.biogaertner.at as well as on his new app “Plobergers Live-Gartentipps“.