Note · 21 July 2026
[ku] 32/26 Art
The Tuijametsä near Aulanko, a forest made of love.
The boardwalk through the Tuijametsä near Aulanko.
Sometimes a forest begins not with a seed but with a longing.
A forest unlike any other
I owe this place to Terho Aalto, the photography legend of Hämeenlinna: the Tuijametsä, a small forest of arborvitae in the Aulanko landscape park, barely half a hectare, which most walkers pass by without noticing. A boardwalk winds between the trunks, the light falls green-filtered all the way to the ground, and even on bright days the forest keeps its visitors in shade.
The story behind it
This forest was planted, not grown. The park it belongs to goes back to Governor Otto Carl Rehbinder and was expanded from 1883 by Hugo Standertskjöld over more than twenty years. The story goes that he built all of it for a Polish countess he had loved as a young officer. She never came to Finland. He remained unmarried, and he opened the park to everyone.
Read the whole story in the magazine →