Dummersdorfer Ufer

Today, the Dummersdorfer Ufer nature reserve is home to the largest abundance of rare plant species in Schleswig-Holstein.

If you follow the course of the Trave towards Lübeck, you will reach the Dummersdorfer Ufer on its western flank south of Skandinavienkai. This approximately 5-kilometre-long stretch of riverbank was placed under nature conservation as early as 1958. Since 1991, the Dummersdorfer Feld has also been a protected landscape area. Covering a total of 340 hectares, the area is home to many endangered and highly sensitive plant and animal species, for which the steep shore and undulating landscape provide many tiny biotopes.

The rolling hills were formed in the course of the ice ages, when glaciers pushed across the land and melted away again. When the water level of the Baltic Sea rose, salt water penetrated the melt channel of the Trave and created the high banks that still exist today. The steep banks are largely characterised by scrub forests, which were used by farmers for centuries for firewood. Around the Stülper Huk, a peninsula jutting into the Trave, there are still extensive dry grasslands that provide a niche for rare plant species. Thyme, heath carnations and gentian, for example, have specialised in nutrient-poor, sunny soils - sheep must regularly graze the dry grassland so that the delicate, colourful "specialists" are not deprived of light by faster-growing plant competitors. For this purpose, the landscape conservation association keeps a herd of heidschnucken, which, with a bit of luck, you can see on the Dummersdorfer Ufer. A narrow beach fringe stretches in front of the steep bank.