What did Joe and I find at the Koblenz National Garden Show? Well, we found flowers, of course. According to the brochures, there were 6,000 square yards of roses alone (5,000 square meters). Everywhere we looked, we saw fabulous combinations of height, texture, and color.
But we also found books.
In a wooded area near the Rhine Promenade, we found this little reading room, complete with one easy chair. (Apparently, reading should be a solitary pursuit.) It was very pleasant to find that books and reading hadn’t been forgotten.
A sign assured us that the books represented here were works by prominent Rhineland-Palatinate authors, that being the part of Germany hosting the National Garden Show. But I think the sign referred to the books printed on the wallpaper. Most of the books you see on the “shelves” here are a “life-size” photographic representation of full bookshelves pasted down as wallpaper. I could run my finger along the shelves and read the spines just as if I were standing at a real bookshelf.
Still, I was pleased to find an interesting assortment of real books in the reading lounge. There were several shelves of children’s books, a nice array of garden books, the Bible, and an eclectic assortment of novels. Among them, I found this old friend:
Yep, that’s Margaret Mitchell’s GONE WITH THE WIND. Nope, I don’t understand it either.
Photographs taken September, 2011, in Koblenz, Germany. Text copyright 2011 Clare B. Dunkle. Photos copyright 2011 Joseph R. Dunkle.