Germany's most extravagant plant expert Tita Giese (b. Nördlingen, 1942; lives and works in Düsseldorf) creates vegetal landscapes in public settings—urban squares, intersections, and gardens around architectural structures. She spent several semesters at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, where she studied with Joseph Beuys, but she does not want to be seen as an artist. Focusing on sites in urban and industrial environments, she helps nature reclaim a niche for itself, developing unique projects at the intersection of art, architecture, urban planning, and botany. She planted bamboo on the grounds of the Düsseldorf airport, palm trees on the square in front of Hamburg's Deichtorhallen, and creepers inside Munich's Salvatorpassage. The rushes she envisioned for Kottbusser Tor, a square in Berlin, were an exception: the project never progressed beyond the planning stage.