Garden Museum

Room 20 – Public gardens

 

For centuries access to the gardens was restricted. It was generally the owners who decided who was allowed in and who was not. In the 18th century, the princes began to open their residence gardens to their subjects. With the Enlightenment the idea of creating gardens specifically for the public began to spread.

Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814), the spiritual father of the English Garden in Munich, based his work on the principle that it "should not just benefit one class, but the whole population". Nature was to have a moral effect and bring all the classes closer together. The landscape architect Friedrich Ludwig Sckell (1750-1823) also supported this idea, and put it into practice as the designer of the English Garden.