Monday, June 15

I walk back up from the shore and at the bottom of Vartioharjuntie I notice the sign I looked at a couple of weeks ago. This time I stop to photograph it.

The whole road acts as an outdoor laboratory. About six years ago the city removed all the old trees that lined the street, most of which had died or planned to very soon. In their place, they put one each of a wide range of different saplings, with a view to testing how each kind of tree would fare in Helsinki.

Now as you walk along the road you can see that some trees have blossomed (literally, in some cases), while other trees survive without exactly thriving, and a few look like they have more or less given up.

The results of this experiment will inform the planting policies all over Helsinki for the next decade or two.