Cottage garden
Until the second half of the 19th century , the term cottage garden generally stood for gardens that were created and managed by farmers . Since then, it has been understood to mean a certain style of house gardens.
history
Emergence
In accordance with the social and economic status of the farmers, useful plants for pets, farm animals and stable animals were given greater consideration than purely ornamental plants and an order based on aesthetic principles. In the performing arts , the cottage garden was often glorified as neglected in the sense of an idyllic wilderness. It was never a scientifically defined independent garden form.
With the font Flora der Bauerngärten in Deutschland by Anton Kerner from 1855, the term “Bauerngarten” was introduced as a type. However, this did not correspond to a horticultural reality, but was based more on "tumbling" romantic ideas of the late 19th century. The idea took on a life of its own, so that for the first time in 1913 an apparently authentically modeled cottage garden found its way into the Hamburg Botanical Garden .
Cottage gardens before 1900 did not correspond to the image that is now conveyed by cottage gardens. Sometimes arable land reached right up to the house, often with interspersed fruit, or open spaces were reserved for the cattle. The layout of the gardens was influenced by the gardens of the monasteries, teachers, pastors and pharmacists. There was no uniform form of garden design before the construction of the “ideal” cottage garden in the second half of the 19th century.
Towards the end of the 19th century, with the transition to the industrial age, it was the city and its bourgeoisie who gave the private garden a new meaning. For one it was the "idyll" with flowers, cut hedges and gazebo, for the other it made it possible for himself to grow herbs, fruit and vegetables. In the face of increasing urbanization , the growth of industry, which went hand in hand with increasing environmental pollution, there were backward-looking, glorifying fantasies, also with regard to allegedly traditional cottage gardens.
Cottage garden Hamburger Art
The cottage garden in the Hamburg Botanical Garden was built with the aim of presenting a proposal for a cottage garden on a relatively small area: where plants are classified according to their biological category (herbs, vegetables, fruit) as well as aesthetic principles. The Hamburger Art cottage garden is characterized by the following features:
- the predominant planting of vegetables and herbs ,
- a rectangular or square system with a cross and
- an enclosure, usually by a fence, sometimes by a wall or a hedge.
In the middle of the crossroads there is often a roundabout , often with a watering hole, or a round flower bed or a small tree. Box hedges to surround the beds or the entire garden are typical. Usually flowers, often perennials , are also planted. In many cases, berries are part of the equipment of a cottage garden, and there are sometimes fruit trees on its north side. Accordingly, cottage gardens have a clear structure and are almost always geometrically laid out.
Instead of authentic models (until 1900, gardens of this type are nowhere to be found), almost all directions of garden culture were used. Contrary to popular belief and descriptions, it is not a traditional garden form. Many “cottage gardens”, however, are identical or further developed copies of the Hamburg mother garden . In this respect, the cottage garden is a "staging" for educational purposes, the layout and maintenance of which require appropriate knowledge and great effort. That may have been the reason why gardens of this kind were initially barely able to establish themselves in the private garden sector.
present
After numerous brightly illustrated publications of modern and sometimes romanticizing modifications, there has been a small renaissance of the cottage garden in Germany since the 1980s . Such or similar garden forms have now been recreated in private allotment gardens . Cottage gardens in open-air museums and corresponding facilities that were created for tourism have contributed to this.
literature
- Renate Brockpähler (Ed.): Farm gardens in Westphalia. Reports from the archive for Westphalian folklore . With photos by Dieter Rensing. 1984 ( full text as PDF )
- Anemarie Eigner: Schleswig-Holstein's old cottage gardens. Husum 1993
- Walter Gröll: Cottage gardens on the Lüneburg Heath. Ehestorf 1988 (= writings of the open-air museum on Kiekeberg. Volume 1).
- HW Haase: The cottage garden in the Vierlanden . In: Lichtwark 24. Ed .: Lichtwark Committee 1962. ISSN 1862-3549 .
- Karin Hochegger: The cottage garden . Ulmer, Stuttgart 2003.
- Janke / Dominka / Scholze: The village school teacher garden - Muesser Blätter of the open-air museum Schwerin-Muess 2003.
- Hermann Kaiser (Ed.): Cottage gardens between Weser and Ems. 2nd Edition. Cloppenburg 2001.
- Anton Kerner : Flora of the cottage gardens in Germany . In: Negotiations of the Zoological-Botanical Society in Vienna , 5, 1855, pp. 787–826.
- Hans-Helmut Poppendiek: The first museum cottage garden . In: Die Gartenkunst 4 (1/1992), pp. 79–101.
- Erich Walter: Franconian cottage gardens. Hof 1995
Web links
- The medieval garden, excerpt from the book "Bauerngärten" by Doris Schulmeyer-Torres
- Site of the Hagen village community about cottage gardens
- Cottage garden culture in southern Baden