The idea behind the park

The English landscape garden

The English Garden is not called English because Englishmen laid it out, but because it follows a doctrine of garden design. And that doctrine had a political point long before it became a question of taste.

English Garden

Two conceptions of a garden

The French baroque garden, with Versailles leading the way, puts nature in order: axes, symmetry, clipped hedges, a centre from which everything can be surveyed. The garden proves that the ruler rules over trees as well.

The English landscape garden of the 18th century turns this round. It works with curving paths, open meadows, freely placed groups of trees and watercourses meant to look as if they had always been there. There is no point from which you see everything. This garden has to be walked to be understood.

The rules of the school

No axes: The paths curve so that the views open one after another, not all at once.
Scenes instead of survey: The park is a sequence of pictures you walk through.
Follies: Single buildings give the scenes their theme: a round temple, a pagoda, a hermitage. The Chinese Tower and the Monopteros are exactly that.
Hidden boundaries: Ditches instead of walls, so that the eye runs on past the edge of the park into the landscape.
Water in motion: Streams and lakes should look found, not built. At the Kleinhesseloher See exactly that has been achieved, although the lake is man-made.

Munich, 13 August 1789

On that day Elector Karl Theodor ordered by decree that the land along the Isar be turned into a people's park. The word is what matters. Most landscape gardens of those years belonged to princes and the nobility; this one was meant for the public from the start. It was opened to the public in 1792.

The impulse came from Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753 to 1814), a physicist and inventor born in Massachusetts who rose in Bavarian service to become minister of war. He had earlier promoted military gardens, kitchen gardens for the soldiers, and the people's park also bore his social signature.

The execution was entrusted to Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell (1750 to 1823), court gardener from Schwetzingen and one of the most important garden artists of his day. From 1804 he headed the court gardens administration, and until his death he gave the park the wide meadows and loose groups of trees that still shape it.

The park in numbers

Area: around 375 hectares, 3.75 square kilometres
Division: southern part around 130 hectares, northern part around 245 hectares
Extent: southern part about two kilometres, northern part about three kilometres in length
Paths: 78 kilometres, 12 of them bridle paths
Visitors: around five million a year
Founding: decree of 13 August 1789, opened to the public in 1792

Why this matters for the tower

The Chinese Tower is no chance building. It is one of the park's first buildings, finished in 1790, and with the tavern, by tradition pouring since 1792, it took on the sociable role that garden theory had intended for it. That strangers sit side by side at around 7,000 seats today is the idea of 1789 pursued by other means.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the English Garden called English?

Because it follows the English school of garden art: curving paths, open meadows, freely placed groups of trees, the opposite of the axially symmetrical baroque garden.

When was the English Garden founded?

On 13 August 1789 Elector Karl Theodor ordered by decree that the land be turned into a people's park. The park was opened to the public in 1792.

How big is the English Garden?

Around 375 hectares, that is 3.75 square kilometres, with 78 kilometres of paths and around five million visitors a year.

Who designed the English Garden?

The impulse came from Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. The execution lay with Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, who shaped the park until his death in 1823.

What is a folly?

A building in a landscape garden that gives a scene its theme, such as a round temple, a pagoda or an artificial ruin.

German version