The Prince George Garden in Darmstadt

 

 The Prince George Garden in Darmstadt

Adjacent to the largest inner-city park in Darmstadt, another smaller garden is hidden behind a wall and obscured by the physical institutes of the Technical University. While the neighboring large Herrngarten is an English landscape park, the Prince Georg Garden exudes a baroque flair. Only 1.8 hectares in size, it was intended as a gift for Prince Georg Wilhelm in 1764. His father, the Landgrave, had two gardens united, which also explains the L-shape of the garden today. At one end is the Prince George Palace from 1710, which houses a porcelain museum and is therefore also called Prozellanschlösschen (Castle of porcelain). At the other end of the L is an ornately painted garden house that once belonged to Lieutenant General Johan Rudolf von Pretlack. The garden itself is planted with flowers, vegetables and herbs, making it both an ornamental and a kitchen garden.

 

 

The garden of Mathildenhöhe

 

The garden of Mathildenhöhe

Art Nouveau houses, a Russian chapel and the wedding tower known as the Five Finger Tower characterize Mathildenhöhe, which has been a World Heritage Site since 2021. Originally, a landscape park existed on this site, but it was redesigned in the style of a reform garden when the artists' colony was founded at the turn of the century. Geometric lines and pergolas with vines and wisteria characterize the garden today. 

 

 

 

In the 1960s, a narrow connecting park was created from the palace in the city center to Mathildenhöhe, which shows the style of the 60s in a very classical way: clear lines, seating niches and flower beds and water areas set in concrete. The name Mathildenhöhe refers to the wife of one of Darmstadt's princes.

 

 

 

The Rosenhöhe in Darmstadt

The Rosenhöhe in Darmstadt

The name says it all - on the top of the hill on the outskirts of Darmstadt there is a large rose garden. If you walk on from there, you will find yourself in a wooded hilly landscape that makes you forget the nearby big city.

The park was created in 1817, when Grand Duchess Wilhelmine commissioned a master garden designer from Schwetzingen to create an English landscape garden. At its edge, two mausoleums were built after 1826 as burial places for the grand ducal family.

The name-giving rose garden on the highest elevation was built after 1900. Rose dorms, pergolas, terraces and ponds were created. Parts of the original park were converted into farmland or cultivated after the World Wars and have disappeared today. What remained was about 18 hectares of landscape park. Besides the Rose Dome, the new and the old mausoleum, the Lion's Gate and the Biedermeier teahouse are worth seeing.

 

 1. The lion's gate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. The tea house 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. The old mausoleum

4. The new mausoleum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Portal of Palais Brunnen (destroyed during World War II) 

 

 6. Ponds for water lillies (some ponds are heatable)

 

 

 

 

7. Pergola and rose dome

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. Modern art