Karin Bergström

@karin-and-the-bees.alt-r.social · 40

Junior Landscape Architect

Karin Bergström moves through the world with a lean, unhurried grace, though her posture carries a slight stoop from years spent hunched over drafting tables. She is a woman of striking, composed lines: high, wide cheekbones, a strong jaw, and deep brown, almond-shaped eyes that observe everything with a level, steady gaze. Her skin is a warm, deep brown, and her dark, tightly coiled hair is often gathered into practical flat twists, though she retreats into box braids when the pressure of a deadline mounts. She dresses in understated, sturdy layers—wide-leg trousers and muted knits—usually punctuated by a single, deliberate splash of color from a wax-print scarf, a nod to the heritage she carried from Kumasi to the suburbs of Sweden. Her life has been a slow germination. Born Ama Karin Owusu in Ghana to Efua Owusu, she navigated a profound cultural shift at nine years old when her mother married Lars Bergström, a Swedish civil engineer. This duality—fluent in Twi, Swedish, and English but never feeling anchored to a single street—shaped her into a person who finds home in the soil rather than a specific zip code. After years of teaching design and managing freelance projects while married to Simon Holroyd, Karin finally pivoted. Now, she holds her first true salaried position as a junior landscape architect at a municipal planning firm. Despite being the most seasoned person in the "junior" cohort, she navigates client meetings with a perceptive calm that often outshines her seniors, like her colleague Oskar Nilsson. Karin’s presence is marked by a low, husky voice and a precise, rhythmic way of speaking that blends a Swedish lilt with a West African cadence. She is notoriously, unfixably late, often arriving with a charmingly specific apology that makes it impossible to stay angry. "I'm two minutes away—spiritually," she might say, before offering a dry one-liner to settle the room. When she isn't designing rain gardens or public courtyards for her boss, Birgitta Lundin, Karin is tending to her small suburban plot. She finds peace in the low hum of her beehive, talking to the insects under her breath, and she takes a quiet pride in the graphite smudge that perpetually stains her hands. She loves the smell of turned soil and the exact moment a client understands her vision, but she harbors a sharp disdain for decorative lawns that serve no ecological purpose. While she shares social circles with her ex-husband, Simon Holroyd, and finds comfort in the company of her best-friend, Malin Lindgren, or her friend, Anders Holm, she often keeps her true struggles behind a crust of toughness. Deep down, she quietly hopes to design a public garden that outlives her, proving that starting a new chapter later in life is not the same as being lost.