Vegetation
A number of little blind passengers have staged quite a show. Small seeds carried for free by ore freighters from an array of countries to the Meiderich mill have long grown roots and tinted the mill site by colors of every description. Fresh green creates a nature park. The former tracks between the ore bunkers and the sintering plant are transformed into a true kaleidoscope of colors and blackbirds and other musicians of the skies sing their songs. Mothers sit back and relax to their tune at the Nest and Egg playground. The Wilderness, natural nature in the city jungle, waits merely a few steps away. It is open for a stroll, but closed for any type of hectic activity.
The "Wilderness" is located in a hollow stretch of land between what has remained of a built-up street and a railroad embankment.
The gardens which were here originally were cut off from the residential areas by the construction of the A 42 and A 59 highways. When the garden houses had been pulled down, the area earmarked for potential mill extensions was left to itself and grew wild. Overgrown shrubs and bushes defied access.
The Wilderness thus passed through a largely undisturbed phase of development before the closure of the mill and is now in an unusually advanced succession phase.
When iron production was stopped, the Wilderness remained undisturbed and became one of the most valuable biotopes in the Park.
A wide variety of bird species such as the garden warbler and the blackcap, the willow tit and the great tit, the willow warbler, the dunnock, the chiffchaff, the icterine warbler and the yellow wagtail live and breed in a world of common elder shrubs, common hawthorn and willow trees and blackberry bushes. Even the song of the nightingale has been heard.
To preserve this habitat, nature takes priority over recreation in the Wilderness.
Visitors should therefore not enter this part of the Park.
