High above the old town, right on the Tappeiner Promenade, sits the herb garden — a place few people in Merano have ever set foot in. The City Gardens Department commissioned us to study its future in a feasibility assessment. The promenade takes its name from the physician and botanist Franz Tappeiner, whose conviction was that health, greenery and rest belong in everyday city life. The garden itself shows little of that: it's in poor condition and rarely used. 

Our proposal builds on what's there. Dry stone walls terrace the steep slope into three spaces: a cultivated landscape of vines and orchard meadow, a near-untouched rock garden that reveals the hillside's glacier-polished stone, and the herb garden itself, opening onto the promenade in broad sitting steps and closing in a shaded pergola. One continuous path ties the three together, reinforced by four access points to the promenade, the old town and the Museum Palais Mamming. 

In 2029, the promenade turns one hundred — and with it, the herb garden steps into the light under a new name, one that brings Tappeiner's ideas of health, greenery and rest back into the present: Tappeinergarten. 

The herb garden opens onto the promenade with generous seating steps, becoming part of it. Across terraced beds framed by dry-stone walls, wide paths invite strolling while narrow trails lead right through the herbs – an experience on every level, with scent, views and the changing seasons.

The pergola

The garden concludes with a pergola, a characteristic element of the Tappeiner Promenade. It gathers the paths into a shaded, circular meeting point with a fountain and a long bench – for readings, small concerts or informal encounters.