Puijo Forest
Pleasure Garden was presented as Soiva metsä (The Forest of Music) by BarokkiKuopio Early Music Festival in Puijo Forest, Kuopio, Finland.
Puijo is a protected nature reserve, included in the European Union Natura 2000 protection plan for its ancient Fennoscandian herb-rich forest and Western Taïga environments. The area was first protected in 1928. The nature reserve land is owned by the city of Kuopio, and the forests and recreational areas are free to enter.
The Kuopio Naturalists’ Society (KLYY) was established in December 1896. It is one of the oldest scientific societies in Finland and a local representative of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (Suomen luonnonsuojeluliitto, SLL).
The forest vegetation includes several types of spruce, pine and birch trees, as well as moist fern and tall grass groves. The forest-covered hill offers a variety of nature- and sports-related activities, and is visited yearly by 100, 000 people. Finnish people are very fond of nature, and Finland is the most forest rich country in Europe, with approximately 75% of its surface area covered by forests.
Pleasure Garden was installed in the old-growth forest, where the tall spruces, lush ferns and moss-covered soil have been mostly untouched for centuries. Partly due to the old agricultural technique of burning forests before growing crops — resulting in a nutrient-rich layer of ash, which makes the soil fertile — the amount of different species of vegetation and animals is astonishing. Puijo’s old forest is also an ideal habitat for many birds, including chaffinch, wrens and treecreepers, robins, song thrushes, goldcrest, siskin and northern three-toed woodpeckers, red-breasted flycatchers and greenish warblers. This was a magical place for the work, and brought new dimensions to the listening experience.
