Outdoor areas

The Arctic/Tundra is the area of ​​the Northern Hemisphere which extends from 90oN (the North Pole), to an irregular boundary between 70oN to 550N latitude. It covers countries such as Canada, Alaska, Russia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Greenland. The Arctic Circle lies at the 66 o 33' N latitude, and is used to roughly define the southern limit of the Arctic area. The Arctic Circle marks the boundary between the midnight sun of summer and the winters without sunlight. This makes it an area with a short cold summer and a long, icy, dark winter.

Tundra means treeless plaines and makes up 5% of the land.

The tundra garden at the Wadden Sea Center started out with 30 different plants, today there are fewer. All the plants have different requirements for the thickness of the soil layer, many like wet soil and many live well with permafrost. We, however, do not have permafrost in the Wadden Sea Centre's tundra garden.

Dryas, dwarf willow and various stoneworts and rockfoils are dominant plants in the tundra garden.

The tundra is a breeding ground for several of the Wadden Sea's migratory birds, such as the Red knots, Bar-tailed godwit and Ruddy turnstone.

The garden is looked after by a group of volunteers.

Since the center was remodeled and expanded in 2017, we have worked to increase the biodiversity around the center by laying out the area around the center as a flower meadow with plants that originate in the area on the edge of the marsh on the geest. Vester Vedsted is placed on a geest between Ribe and Rejsby Marsh.

We have sown a meadow-mixture. The first 10 years, the will come and mow the meadow and remove the material. By removing the material, we remove nutrients from the time when the area was agricultural land. By mowing the meadow in March, the dead material has shaded the grass, all winter, and when we mow it in March, the plants get light and the flowers have a chance against the grasses. Already in the first years after the reopening, we are seeing more and more flowers in the meadow. One of the ways in which we minimize the grass, is to sow yellow rattle, whose roots wrap around the grass's roots and absorb nutrients.

Overheard in the meadow, a little girl asks her mother: "Mom, why are there so many insects here?" The mother replies "It's because there are so many flowers here".

Today, 163 species of plants, insects, birds and animals have been registered on the meadow. At inaturalist.com you can find all our species around the center, by typing in our adress Okholmvej 6760 Ribe.