Castle garden in the 19th century

( Castle garden in the classical and romantic periods )

At the end of the 18th century, hand in hand with the rise of the natural lacemaking conception of garden design, began the decline of the Schwarzenbergs\' interest in the use of the garden as well as the whole castle area. The confined space of the Krumlov castle no longer suit the needs of the lifestyle of the time, and as the residential habits of the Schwarzenbergs in Český Krumlov were sporadic at best, continued maintenance of the demanding French-style patterned gardens became more work than could be alloted to. The subsequent simplification of the baroque arrangement was nonetheless carried out gradually rather than all at once.

The design of the castle and parcels of adjacent land ( surveyed in 1785 ) already shows that the brodery was discontinued on the lower parterre and in its place put a simple classicist adaptation. Other parts of the garden have still retained their baroque, respectively rococo, form.

A geometrical design of the court garden and the contiguous pieces of land from 1816 shows other boscets ( small forests planted on the surfaces of geometrical shapes) on which previous regular maintenance was discontinued. On the surface of the former parterre in front of the summerhouse Bellarie the plan marks out a grassy surface with two flower beds representing Schwarzenberg\'s princely coat of arms. The most interesting, however, is the state in which the boscet occurs in comparison with nowaday´s so-called dry pond. On the square area measuring 60 x 60 metres, a miniature garden arrangement was founded in the style of an English park with irregular paths, groups of bushes, and trees. All this within the bounds of baroque composition and in the vicinity of mazes and bowers which existed at the time.

In 1842 the so-called snail maze was removed, as well as the square maze a year later. The only remnant of the latter is the Musical pavillion.

The gradual transformation of the garden into a natural landscape style, meaning a fashionable collection of exotic trees and a good dose of modesty, led finally to the transformation of the original baroque gardens into a romantic garden with areas of almost woodland characteristics and dendrologically valuable examples of trees but with a relatively low level of free area within the garden itself.

This all took place during the uninterrupted existence of a practically intact baroque architectonic component of garden composition which made the existence of natural landscape adaptation on a level of quality such as the parks in the castle at Hluuboká nad Vltavou or Červený Dvůr (see (Castle Červený Dvůr - park) impossible. The applications of ideas and methods particular to so-called English parks, and the consequences thereof, led to a decline in value of the Český Krumlov Castle gardens. The level of its maintenance, however, especially in the case of rich flower cultivation, remained high.

(jo)

Further information :
Castle garden in the 20th century