Hello! Thank you stopping by here. In this blog, I’m sharing specifics of my life long  project. Project Lothlorien. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay.

I am a Lord of the Rings fan but you probably guessed it from the title of this blog. Almost every post you may see tons of LOTR (Lord Of The Rings) references. Please don’t be mad at me. Go read the book. You’ll love it.

Lothlorien is a Locus Ameonus. It impressed me deeply when I first read in the book. Planned two other projects before Lothlorien and also named them after Tolkien’s places. Project Rivendell failed because it depends upon other guys who now have their own families and own concerns. Project Ithilien never got mature enough because it was an alternative to Project Rivendell. Therefore I come up with a third project idea: Project Lothlorien.

Project Lothlorien is at least 20 years long, land transformation project. I have initiated it last year. Working on it and very committed to keep working. Today, I’ve decided to introduce it to the world. Share it with everybody who is interested in the concept. So, what is Project Lothlorien and why I named it so? Well, first and most, I’m a big Lord of the Rings fan. What name would you expect from me? Second, as “the fellowship” heal their wounds, and forget their sorrows in Lothlorien, I do feel the same way where in this project takes place. Third, when I first read flowers blooming on Cerin Amroth, description of Niphredil resembled image of a snowdrop on my mind (sorry people, some words which I don’t explain here are meaningful only to those who have already read LOTR). An endemic snowdrop species, Galanthus trojanus is blooming in where I called “Lothlorien”, hence there this naming idea comes. This is a project to transform a small and ordinary Turkish village into a fantasy land, a locus amoenus, “Lothlorien” using flora changes.

No, I’m not building elven houses, “talan”s on the trees or make up myself pointy ears. The essence of Lothlorien is preservation. Vegetation is at the heart. I’m trying to do the same. Change the land through flora changes. Big changes.

Where is this so called “Lothlorien” you ask 🙂 well, it’s in Turkey. Precisely North western Turkey. It’s a village in Çanakkale province, 24 kilometers to Town of Biga. It’s official name is “Kepekli Köyü” in Turkish (means Kepekli Village). BTW, ancient city of Troy is in Çanakkale too. Anyway, village is close to Istanbul (south west of it). It takes 2 hours from Istanbul to Bandırma by ferry then 20 minutes drive to the village (now on I’ll refer to it as Lothlorien or Lorien)

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

It is a small village. Population is less then 150 on winter time, and around 250 on summer. The less people the better. Besides population, climate is the most important factor for success of my project. Western parts of Turkey is under influence of Mediterranean climate but this region is on the northern latitudes. Weather is a bit colder and annual precipitation is a bit higher than classical Mediterranean basin. We have 1 or 2 snowfalls in a year. Half of the mountains are covered with pine and oak forests. Other half is under maquis. Farms are everywhere. Sunflowers, tomatoes, wheat, barley and rice are most produced crops. Actually they are quite diverse according to their needs but farmers succeed to produce enough yield somehow. There are orchards too. Apple, cherry, peach and walnut gardens are common. Why I tell you about them? Well, plants are essence of Lothlorien. Mallorn trees specifically. I had to find correct place to plant lots and lots of trees and other plants to realize the project. I assume this is the correct place.

This is some kind of umbrella project. There are plenty of other projects under this name. It’s a huge, overwhelming job to take a village and turn it into Laurelindorenand. Especially if you are the only resource of it, live another city and can visit there only once in a month. Therefore I divided this job into smaller (but long running) sub projects. I’ll write the progress of these projects under different categories. Each project will be a category in this blog.

This is it for now. Next, I’ll discuss about categories. Thank you for reading.