Open air abounds in parks and private courtyards, all well-groomed and colorful. Ponds and canals add quiet and peace and invite wild creatures. A typical farm home rises around a central courtyard with exposed timbers and thatched roof. Animals are sheltered in one section, people in another. Maintenance equipment, for wheel wrighting, candle making, forging and weaving, is contained in a third.
Some habitations keep animals and people close together for warmth.
Solid and tightly built, most homes are decorated with flowers inside and out as well as with orchards and crops. Near Tisvildeleje, sand dunes along the beach give way to a gnarled pine forest which stretches along the coast. It was planted in the 17th Century after an extended period of sand-drift buried the entire community and its little Tiberke Church. The village, located northwest of Copenhagen, was picked up and moved - but the church lay buried until the forest grew and protected its site. Dug out and restored, it sits on a knoll in the farm country surrounded by trees.