Pleasure ground

Reconstructed pleasure ground in Glienicke Park looking towards the Jungfernsee on the River Havel
Flower bed in Glienicke pleasure ground
Flower basket with flower bed edgings of terracotta

The pleasure ground is an area of garden near to a building in landscape gardens of English style that, in contrast to the outlying park, stresses artistic elements over the more natural elements.

Concept

The German landscape gardener, Hermann, Prince of Pückler-Muskau, explained the meaning of this term in his 1834 publication Andeutungen über Landschaftsgärtnerei ("Ideas On Landscape Gardening") as follows:

"The word pleasure ground is difficult enough to render in German and I have therefore felt it better to retain the English expression. This means a piece of land adjacent to a house, which is fenced in and ornamented, of much greater extent than gardens, and something of an intermediate thing, a connecting element between the park and the actual gardens."[1]
And further: "[...] if the park is an idealised, condensed piece of the natural world, so the pleasure garden is an extended residence [...] in this way [...] the suite of rooms, is continued on a larger scale in the open air, [...][2]

Pückler-Muskau's description refers to one of the three elements of the English landscape garden that are, from the outer perimeter of the estate to its main building, the park, the pleasure ground and the flower gardens. Usually there was also a flower-bedecked terrace on the house itself so that the transition from the open countryside to the house was in several stages.

History

The type of garden known as the pleasure ground in the shape of an ornamented area of lawn right next to the house was already known in England during the Renaissance, and from the second half of the 18th century it became very popular. Encouraged by the landscape architect, Humphry Repton, this division of the grounds of a country house spread to Germany around 1800 and was employed inter alia by Prince Pückler-Muskau and Peter Joseph Lenné, who made use of it in their designs at Muskau, Glienicke and Babelsberg. The first pleasure ground in Prussia is probably that laid out at Glienicke Palace by Lenné in 1816.

Sources

References

  1. Hermann Fürst von Pückler-Muskau: Andeutungen über Landschaftsgärtnerei. Fünfter Abschnitt, Park und Gärten, Stuttgart 1834, p. 48
  2. Pückler-Muskau, Andeutungen, p. 52/53