This is where French landscape style and English garden art meet: the palace garden is the most important baroque garden in northern Germany and continues to unfold its splendor to this day. In the 16th century, today's Schwerin Palace emerged from a castle. It was immediately surrounded by various gardens, which were gradually expanded. The garden architect Jean Legeay in particular shaped the green area.
After Christian Ludwig II became state administrator in 1728 and imperial commissioner in 1736, he engaged the French court architect Jean Laurent Legeay. He was entrusted with the renovation of the desolate palace park in 1748 and modelled the design on Versailles. So the new park was given the cross canal laid out as a water parter in the central visual axis. In addition, avenues, bosquets and lawn patterns bordered with box trees as stylised plant ornaments characterise the grounds.
For the new palace garden, Christian Ludwig purchased 14 sandstone sculptures by the Dresden sculptor Baltasar Permoser. Between 1840 and 1852, Peter Joseph Lenné was commissioned by Grand Duke Paul Friedrich and Friedrich Franz II to redesign the Schwerin Palace Garden. In his plans, the existing baroque garden was to be preserved.
At the same time, the serious extension included many new elements: The new castle garden, the various kitchen gardens with warm and cold houses, the cascades, the hippodrome or even the layout of the wine drive.
On the lake side of the castle garden are the orangery and the grotto that extends into the water of Lake Schwerin. On the "Liebesinsel" (Love Island) there is also a quiet place to linger under the weeping willows. Duke Friedrich Franz II dedicated this small romantic island in the castle garden to his wife Auguste as a sign of his love.
About the Style
The Schwerin Palace Park - as we know it today - is based on two very different designs. The park designed by Jean Laurent Legeay in 1748 reflects the regent's claim to power at the time. Nature was subordinated to his creative will. In contrast, Lenné's redesign and extension of the palace park to the east and south from 1840 to 1857 reflects the views of the Romantic period. It stages the palace as a magnificent building within the castle gardens, the Old Garden, the Marstall Island and the surrounding lake landscape.
It is thus placed in the middle of a large landscape prospect, as if in a painting. The palace is reflected picturesquely in the landscaped Kreuzkanal. The avenues, bosquets, the large grotto, pavilions and water features are also embedded in the gardens of Schwerin Palace. Together with the arcades, the hippodrome, the lawn cascade and the sculptures, the park offers an ideal combination of architecture, nature and art.
The park was extensively restored for the Federal Horticultural Show in 2009, so that visitors can continue to succumb to the baroque charm of the well-tended greenery.
