[72] Not far from the house at Eschenau is the meadow/die wiese, a 4000 square metre patch of land purchased by de vries in 1986. A narrow rectangle of uneven ground with rough meadow grasses, mixed shrubs and young trees, it extends into acres of gently undulating arable land from its upper boundary with the edge of a small forest which rises behind it. This is itself but a remnant of the great forest that once covered this area. Once there were many more small meadows around the village, between the forested lands, but the economies of scale determining the farming of the local land, here as in so many other parts of Western Europe, have led to the grubbing out of hedgerows, copses and small orchards, and of the many wild shrubs and trees of all kinds that they sustained in the varied landscape and open countryside in previous times. the meadow was at the time of its purchase simply a demarcated plot continuous with and indistinguishable from the denatured landscape around it.

[74] from what you achieve with artificial or chemical manure." The grasses in de vries's meadow are cut once a year, and the land is not treated, and 'in becoming poorer it [becomes] richer in plants' as the taller grasses are mown and cannot succeed and eliminate the less robust meadow flowers and herbs.

source: Mel Gooding, herman de vries. chance and change (Thames and Hudson : London 2006) 72-75]