“A place of recreation for body, mind and spirit”

In late 1946, Adele and Gottlieb Duttweiler created the «Im Grüene» foundation by converting their huge private plot above Rüschlikon. The site – known as Park im Grüene – was opened to the general public in 1947; it is the first of four Migros parks.

Gottlieb and Adele Duttweiler bought up land little by little until they had a 45,000 m2 plot with magnificent views of Lake Zurich and the Alps. On their behalf, Hermann Gattiker, a painter and son of a gardener, transformed the meadows into a park using two thousand loads of earth, creating artificial hills, terraces, ponds and rock trails, as well as planting trees, construction a swimming pool and a tennis court, and building a romantic thatched-roof house.
The Duttweiler’s main residence, however, was never finished, with Duttweiler later stating that «Our desire to live in a manor park simply waned with the ever-escalating war.» And so in 1946, the owners handed the «Im Grüene» foundation over to the public – first to members of the Migros cooperative, and then to the general public. The humble Dutti said, «The money came from the Migros and we were its sole owners; it is only natural for us to give it back to those who helped raise the money indirectly.»
Today, Migros operates three other parks: Signal de Bougy on Lake Geneva, the Park im Grüene in Münchenstein, and Bern’s Gurtenpark.