Cottage garden

Until the early 20th century, the term cottage garden is quite common for gardens that have been created and managed by farmers. According to the social and economic status of the farmers found so-called crop and space for home, yard and barn animals to a greater extent into account, as pure as ornamental plants and an order according to aesthetic principles. In the performing arts, the cottage garden was like glorified as unkempt in the sense of idyllic wilderness. A scientifically definable and historically grown garden form with its own type, he never was.

The history of the cottage garden as it is now described in literature and used as garden form, starts at the beginning of the 20th century.

Farm Garden Hamburg Art

The cottage garden in the narrower sense is a beginning of the 20th century, more or less common garden form. The first of this type was built in 1913 in the " Botanical Garden Hamburg " with the aim of a relatively small area a kind of ' ideal ' represent and organize plants by both their biological category (herbs, vegetables, fruits, etc.) and according to aesthetic principles.

The cottage garden Hamburger species is characterized by the following features:

In the middle of the Crossroads there is often a roundabout, often with a water source, or a round flower bed or a small tree. Boxwood hedges to the Mount of beds or the whole garden are also typical. Mostly are also flowers, perennials often planted. The facilities of a cottage garden belongs in many cases soft fruit, sometimes found on its northern side fruit trees. Cottage gardens are almost always geometric layout and have a clear structure.

Instead authentic role models, use was made ​​of almost all directions of garden culture. Until about 1900 gardens of this kind are never detected, so they are contrary to widespread depictions and descriptions not a traditional garden form. Many contemporary cottage gardens are identical or advanced copies of the Hamburg mother garden.

" The ancient Germans provided the fence, by the Romans derived the fruit, the monks of the Middle Ages made ​​for medicinal herbs, and cross- ways, and the nobility controlled the boxwood at - that was the garden, the farmers had only left their name: the old farmer's garden. "It describes Hermann Kaiser.

In this respect, the cottage garden is a production for educational purposes, the establishment and maintenance require appropriate knowledge and great effort. That may be the reason been that cottage gardens of this kind in the field of private gardens initially could hardly prevail.

Only after numerous colorful illustrated publications of modern and sometimes romanticized modifications talking is allowed in Germany by a small Renaissance, after which those or similar garden forms now found in small private gardens since the 1980s. Contributed to this cottage gardens in the historical and new school gardens, open-air museums or various projects of tourism in rural areas.

History

Cottage gardens before 1900 did not correspond to the image that is now taught by cottage gardens. Sometimes ranged arable land nearly to the House approach, often with scattered fruit, or there were open spaces reserved for the cattle.

A long tradition had the monastery gardens and the gardens of the later teachers, pastors and pharmacist. The income of the village school teachers ranged from rare to be able to live without a side job or horticulture for their own use, for the pastors, it was similar. However, they had the leisure and knowledge to create a garden halfway technically correct. With regard to pharmacists the professional interest to the medicinal herbs determined the garden picture.

Of course, the gardens of the farmers were also exposed to before 1900 many influences through the gardens of monasteries, teachers, pastors and pharmacist. A common form of garden design but there was before the construction of the ideal cottage garden in the early 20th century did not.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the transition to the industrial age, it was the city and the bourgeoisie, which could get a new meaning to the private garden. To one he was the ' Idyll ' with abundant flowers, clipped hedges and the famous Gazebo, the other he made ​​it possible to grow food for themselves herbs, fruits and vegetables.

With increasing urbanization and the growth of the industry, which was accompanied by increasing environmental pollution, it came to the city garden or allotment movements. "Get out of the country! " Was the beginning of the 20th century, the slogan of committed social democrats, who were concerned about the physical well-being of urban children.

Whatever today's children of the ' Farmhouse ', was then the learning and working in the so-called school garden. The history of school garden can be traced back to the 17th century. He first served the study of individual plants. Only since the end of the 19th century is the horticultural work of the students in the foreground. In some contemporary journals plans of such a school garden have been published that clearly at the so-called village schoolmaster - garden oriented, but also already show the cross-shaped path or a planted roundabout.

The ideal jump from the first drafts of a school garden to Hamburg cottage garden was not a big and appear in time ( 1913) consistently. Its historical significance is and remains controversial.