Greenart.de Meets Greenart.com

GreenArt's Counterpart Across the Pond
From the Green Book of Transatlantic Relations

Imagine our astonishment when we came across the domain www.greenart.com during an online search: It's not just that we thought we were reading our own corporate philosphy. The owner of the U.S. company called Green Art is also from Germany, he shares our penchant for art, and he, too, draws on his experiences from various trips all over the globe. Most surprisingly, though, the business is located on the East Coast only a 20-minute drive away from the home of another landscaper friend of Mirko Fallak's, whom he was going to visit in March 2007 anyway. What a small world this can be ...

Three weeks later on a sunny winter morning, an icy wind was blowing when Mirko Fallak turned off the highway and pulled into the driveway of the landscaping business about 75 miles north of Boston. Two curious chickens approached him hesitantly as he was parking his rental car next to the pickup truck with the familiar company name. And what a memorable moment it was when the two GreenArt founders eventually shook hands...

Thomas Berger grew up in the Moselle region and moved to New England with his American wife. In the mid-1990s, roughly at the same time when Mirko founded GreenArt in Germany, Thomas happened to come up with the same name for his planned business.

And indeed, both enterprises rely on the same talent for creative concepts, the same affinity for stones, and the same love of nature.

With his newly founded company, Thomas managed to revive the almost forgotten craft of natural stone paving in America. On his own yard, the agricultural expert from Germany enjoys experimenting with dwarf forms of plants that are well suited for miniature landscapes. During the winter, he spends much time in his own stonemason's studio shaping unique sculptures that give natural stones a new face. In the numerous posh gardens along the Atlantic coastline, he sees an enormous potential for his eye-catchers made of stone.

Not surprisingly, both landscape designers immediately got along well. Time flew by as they exchanged their experiences as artists and entrepreneurs on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Although Mirko's travels mostly take him to other parts of the world, he has been quite familiar with the American culture since he spent his senior high-school year in Ohio.

While U.S. gardens tend to be simple by German standards, the "land of opportunity" does host some of the best gardens in the world. Modern U.S. landscape design places a particular focus on assigning plants to their most natural location in order to ensure the best possible growth with the least possible maintenance effort. Among the increasingly popular objects of affection are stone gardens combining the rough character of rocks with the gentle beauty of alpine flowers. A hallmark of American tradition is the vast range of comfortable wooden decks and porches in a variety not found in Germany.

Don't you agree that intriguing inspiration often sparks the best ideas?

We believe this is a good reason to visit other places and to "think outside the box" every once in a while.