Bernstorff Palace Gardens are large and forest-like and can be traced back to the late 1760s. The castle gardens are in an English-inspired Romantic landscape garden style – a style that had just been introduced to Denmark at the time.
Bernstorff Palace Gardens has plenty of lawns, oak and beech woods, making it an ideal place for a good walk. The more exclusive and elegant part of the gardens contains a rose garden, an orchard, greenhouses, and an idyllic tea house.
The Swedish Villa is another attraction. The beautiful yellow wooden villa was bought by Christian IX's Queen Louise at the major Agriculture and Art Exhibition in 1888. The Swedish Villa now hosts art exhibitions and serves as a café.
History
Bernstorff Palace and Gardens is named after King Frederik V's foreign minister Johan Hartvig Ernst Bernstorff.
Frederik V who reigned from 1746 to 1766 wanted his close friend and foreign minister to have a summer residence which befitted his stature. In 1752 he donated a section of the royal estate just north of Copenhagen in to the project. The king's French architect, Nicolas-Henri Jardin, who also designed projects for the royal properties Fredensborg, Amalienborg and Marienlyst was also commissioned to design Bernstorff Palace and Gardens. It is not known whether the blueprint for the garden was followed completely. The plan gave notice of a new trend in Danish horticulture, the emergence of romantic landscape gardens previously associated with British and German Palace gardens in particular. The Palace Gardens have been open to the public since 1945.
Vegetation
The castle was built in the middle of some of the most beautiful countryside on Sealand amid open plains and surrounded by Danish beech forests.
The Bernstorffs were deeply interested in horticulture and introduced apricots, peaches, foreign grapes, rare apple and pear trees, cherries and plums to their kitchen garden. Special types of cucumber, artichokes, lettuces and melons were importede from France and the Netherlands. Real chestnut trees, acacias, holly bushes, tulip trees, plane trees, medlars, azaleas, barberries, quinces, lilacs, etc., were planted in the Palace gardens, all of them species seldom or never encountered in mid-18th century Denmark.
When Christian IX took over the Palace gardens in 1854 before ascending the throne, many of Bernstorff's exotic plants had either withered away or been used as firewood. In consultation with the king, Rudolph Rothe, the first royal garden inspector, decided that the non-indigenous forest which Bernstorff had planted should be replaced with Danish oak and beech, which is precisely what Bernstorff Palace Gardens contains today.
The Swedish Villa
The yellow Swedish Villa in Bernstorff Castle Gardens is a classic example of a Swedish wooden construction. Originally, the villa was bought by Queen Louise and rebuilt in the Castle Gardens as a guest house. Today the villa is being run by the Swedish Villa Foundation and is used for art exhibitions and as a café.
Last updated:: Friday, December 02, 2011
