The Blütengrund

The lake at the centre of the site was created in 1967: man-made, fed by groundwater, almost rectangular, set in a funnel-shaped basin of banked-up earth whose sloping sides served as a sunbathing lawn. Until 2004 it was a public natural swimming lake and, as the town's feasibility study puts it, a meeting place for young and old from Naumburg and the surrounding area. Most people came by bike. Photos from the 1970s and 1980s show the lake full of bathers, music on the shore and a car park crammed with bicycles.

The diving tower is gone. The diving platform still stands at the deepest point, on its concrete foundations. The concrete jetty from the south bank into the lake is still there too.

In 2004 the lake closed to swimmers; the water quality was no longer good enough. Since then it has been an ornamental lake and fishing water for the local angling club, a habitat rather than a bathing spot. Signs on the shore say what the rule has been ever since.

The campsite kept running but was not developed further: much of the investment agreed in the 2006 lease never materialised. What we are taking over is a site with a superb location and old trees. And with more than twenty buildings that have to be demolished.

From 2027 Blytengrund GmbH runs the Blütengrund campsite. We are rebuilding it: opening on 1 March 2027 with 120 pitches, then further building work until 2030 while the site stays open. The natural swimming lake is planned to reopen on 1 May 2029. How we get there is set out under What's coming.

Until then the lake is not a bathing spot. Swimming has been prohibited since 2004. You may look at it and walk round it, but not go in.

Almost the entire site lies within the flood zone of the two rivers. That decides where building is allowed: on four small areas around the lake that stay above flood level. Most of the land remains meadow.

The wildlife was surveyed during planning. At least four species of bat hunt over the Blütengrund, most often the common pipistrelle and the noctule; a summer roost was found in a woodpecker hole in an ash tree. Amphibians have been recorded, and grass snakes occasionally come in from the riverbanks. The trees on the site and the veteran oaks in the meadow to the west are considered particularly valuable. That is why the planning works around them, not through them.

The study's guiding idea is camping in a park: instead of open lawns, wildflower meadows, perennials and loose groups of trees and shrubs divide up the pitches, and what is planted is native to the area. In the south, new habitats are being created as ecological compensation.

Today the lake is a habitat rather than a bathing spot. It stays that way until 2029; after that it is meant to be both: a natural swimming lake and a home for wildlife, with shore zones where plants clean the water.