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How could I introduce the Kozjansko park, the protected area in Eastern Slovenia? I have been employed at the public institute Kozjanski park for ten years. My profession being a landscapist, a landscape architect, I will try to present it accordintly, from the perspective of landscape and my personal experience of the area.

So, the landscape of Kozjansko park. To provide some framework for my thoughts I shall borrow the chapters used in the book Slovenian Landscapes (Slovenske krajine) written by Professor Dušan Ogrin, who is also a researcher of Slovenian language.

Formation

Hills, hillocks, flat lands.
The hills of Orlica, Rudnica and Vetrnik form a frame for the Kozjansko park with its mass, volume, height, with its steep slopes. These hills provide orientation points for the area. Here we can find numerous ravines, isolated rocky hills, peaks, ridges. It is also a forest area.
As a contrast to the hills we see the plains, the flat land near river Sotla and also in some areas by river Bistrica. Experientially, this is a world of fields, meadows.
In the places where these two landscapes meet we can experience even more dramatically the power and characteristics of each of them. 

In between, rolling hills. Diverse, full of valleys, elevations, steep and gentle slopes. This softer landscape is inhabited, crisscrossed with paths, its use is diverse. When my eye sets on a smaller area of meadows and fields, free of houses and other buildings, I feel a strong sense of relaxation. As if this is a pause, the landscape breathes out here in order to breathe in again. I feel that these bits of landscape need to be protected from the human’s building zeal.
Waters

Rivers Sotla and Bistrica. And the numerous rivulets, torrents.
In the image of landscape I am again and again touched by the sight of riverine vegetation which emphasises the linear nature of a water stream with its volume and colour, and thus pointing where the river or rivulet runs.

Did you ever go to a naturally meandering rivulet, made your way through the branches of the bushes and had a look at the water, and the banks? Or do you prefer to observe from afar a straightened, stone-laden riverbed? Which has more life? Which image awakens your imagination?

Here and there, we can find a patch of marshland in the park. I still don’t understand why it scares us.
Green cover, trees

Beech trees, beech forest.
My favourite shade of green in the whole world is the atmosphere of green inside a beech forest that started growing leaves only a few days ago. Take some time and walk, in early May, to a beech tree that just burst into leaf and observe this green colour. For me, these are one of the most inspiring moments of the year. This green soon matures to a dark green which stays throughout the summer, and in the autumn it glows in warm yellow, orange and red shades. I feel privileged to live in this temperate zone and to have the possibility to observe this diversity.

The landscape is emphasised by individual trees; linden, walnut, poplar trees; by pear tree avenues … and of course apple trees with high trunks which inspire me most in the winter. Looking at them, I feel like watching images from Alice in Wonderland. Between them, between their images I feel chatter, laughter, teasing, facetiousness. While among the apple trees growing in an intensively cultivated orchard I see and feel rigidity, torment, convulsion, pain.
Meadows, homes

Meadows, damp, dry, manured.
The green colour of the pastureland is again different. A new shade. A meadow in humid plains is different than dry grassland in the hills. The diversity of flora accompanying certain grasses affects its overall look and its role, also ecological.

In the past, drying of hay was accompanied by activities linked to hay racks. Today, the landscape greets us with bales packed in plastic. I like the way these bales are dispersed in the landscape. Unfortunately they do not give off the pleasant scent. But I don’t like to see them stacked up, looking like a pile that we don’t know what to do with.
Human activity

Fields, orchards, vineyards, gardens.
Traditional agriculture was defined by natural and property circumstances, which are up to this day visible in the patterns of use, in the landscape image. In the plains by river Sotla, the conditions allow for use of modern mechanisation and the agriculture here is highly intensive. Also the hills in this sub-Panonian area, favourably exposed to the sun, provide superb conditions for intense wine growing.

Majority of the hills in the park form a picturesque, diverse cultural landscape with characteristics of extensive agriculture, important also in terms of nature protection. Eurasian wryneck is a bird which is endangered in Europe but which flourishes very well in these areas.

In the gardens kept by caring women you will find many traditional flowers. They simply grow.
Settlements

Settlements of Kozjansko park
Most people would mention the proverbial characteristics of Kozjansko: dispersed settlements. But I have always been impressed by boroughs. Podsreda, Pilštanj, Bistrica ob Sotli, Podčetrtek. Boroughs. Memory of another era. The houses and outbuildings are next to each other, arrangement which is today less frequent. This spatial arrangement of buildings, architecture, has a stimulating effect on me. The houses with typical façade form a borough, a settlement which – including its spatial emphasis, a church – form the Kozjansko identity image. Yes, I still admire them. And all these small architectural details in stone… stone porches, you must take time for them.

In contrast, the surrounding cultural landscape with the mentioned dispersed settlements. Homes immersed in the greenery of orchards. The buildings constructed after the earthquake are less harmonised with the landscape.
Castles
Many can be found here. Magnificent buildings constructed with stone obtained in the area. I still stare, again and again, at these architectural details and ambient.
Places of remembrance and reminder

Also the attitude towards the dead speaks its language, the language of a culture written in the space of graveyards. In the countryside, the deceased had been buried next to churches. We are lucky to have that preserved at the church of Virgin Mary on Pesek near Olimje. The landscape image of this church, clearly erect on the top of the hill with its tower reaching towards the sky, raises even more respect because of this small field of tombstones, blended with the slope, still telling their story in a shade of grey.

As elsewhere in Slovenia, the landscape here is filled with small signs. Wooden crosses, stone marks, chapels, churches, Olimje monastery are the structures which express with their distinct image the spirituality of the people who live here. And co-form the identity of the landscape.