Hermannshof: The German Genius for Goals and Gardens

Yes, they did it again. In early July, under the blinding stadium lights in Rio, Germany conquered Argentina with a soaring pass and mid-air kick to win the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The German team was so strong, the win seemed almost inevitable.

On a whirlwind visit to Germany last summer, I discovered they also make seriously innovative public gardens – and much like football, their greatness is no accident.

Each is the result of a highly diligent work ethic, meticulous research and planning, creativity, and a genius for practical innovation. One garden unites all these elements together into one exquisitely satisfying whole, while the other radically deconstructs them into something perhaps more strange than merely beautiful.

A Tale of Two Gardens

The first is Hermannshof – the renowned experimental botanical and trial gardens encompassing nearly six-acres of centuries-old rolling parkland in the hill-town of Weinheim north of Heidelberg.

Evolving over the past 30 years as a public garden, Hermannshof has pretty much set the benchmark for naturalistic planting design in Germany – blazing new frontiers with a combination of ecological prowess and imaginative artistry orchestrated by some of their leading landscape architects, horticulturalists and designers.

The other garden is Landschaftspark – a steampunk ghost world of abandoned factories and industrial machinery rising out of forest wasteland in the non-descript factory town of Duisburg-Nord.

They could not be more different. And yet each has much to teach the curious gardener/ungardener.

Set around a grand 19th century villa looking out to a grand expanse of lawn skirted by pond, the many borders of Hermannshof flow through a series of themed plantings – each framed around a particular habitat.

The borders shift from woodland to wetland and from prairie to steppe, with eight main habitats in total further divided by provenance (or place of origin).

Seamlessly combining perennials and grasses in myriad ways, the idea is not simply to replicate natural plant habitat but to use it as the launching point for horticultural creative expression.

Like the New Perennial Movement, Hermannshof lives at the crossroads of nature and imagination – fusing both to create a living artform rooted in ecological integrity.

The goal is also literally to bring planting design down to earth – by testing out specific perennial plant combinations with applications for public and private gardens.

Since 1998, Hermannshof’s current director Cassian Schmidt has worked out a complete methodology to plan, design and maintain these adventurous plantings in a simple, practical, and low-maintenance way.

At the other extreme, Landschaftspark shows us how we might reclaim the wreckage of our industrial age and work with nature to breathe new life into the rusted skeletons of the past. I’ll focus on that in the sequel to this post.

Hermannshof: Serious Beauty

Here in North America, Hermannshof is not so widely known and we are the poorer for it. I first heard of the garden via a glowing recommendation from the maestro himself, Piet Oudolf – and the occasional reference in my stack of design books.

It certainly caught my attention. And so last July 2013, I started off my Netherlands adventure with a sidetrip south into Germany to see Hermannshof for myself.

In a stroke of pure serendipity, the one and only person I know in Germany happens to live a mere 15 minutes from the garden. Angela, my one-time serious girlfriend from university days in Montreal, welcomed me to stay with her family – graciously acting as guide, translator, and driver along the way.

And so we found ourselves zooming along the autobahn one morning in an Audi A5 towards Weinheim. As we drove, I noticed almost every conceivable public space was planted out with perennials green, lush, and wild: from the median strip to the roundabouts to the sidewalks.

Hmm, I thought, the germans are not kidding around!

Weinheim itself, is situated on a climatic sweetspot called the “Badische Bergstrasse” on the western slopes of the Odenwald forest, overlooking the Rhine Valley. One of the warmest regions in Germany (Zone 8a) blessed with hot and dry summers, they’ve been making wine and gardens there since Roman times.

Ringed by a high stone wall in the centre of town, Hermannshof lies hidden from outside view.

Not quite knowing where to enter, Angela and I slipped in through an untended garden gate around back – suddenly finding ourselves amidst a shady patch of woodland with ferns and sedges carpeting the forest floor.

Coming from Canada, it all felt strangely familiar, right down to the native plant species clustered at my feet.

As we followed the winding trail, the landscape slowly opened up around us – the woodland changing into dry prairie garden and then mediterranean scrubland – interlaced with surreal yellow euphorbias and spiky silver yuccas. Quite extraterrestial.

Another gravel path curved off towards taller North American grass prairie looming just beyond with the dogwoods cloaked in white beside the main house in the garden. Each new part of the garden flowed subtly into another with the plantings changing with each new habitat.

There is a border dedicated to Dutch New Wave planting, a potagerie by the greenhouse – even a section devoted to giant monster plants like Angelica.

The Science of Plant Alchemy

I’ve been to my share of great botanical gardens which typically present a mix of trial gardens with particular plant species taxonomically displayed like in a zoo – along with more designed mixed borders to show them in context.

At Hermannshof, it feels fundamentally different with no plants in cages. Or neat and tidy english borders.

Every plant habitat presents diverse groupings of intermingled combinations to achieve a highly naturalistic effect. Within each major section, there’s a green sign with a plant list detailing of all the species of perennials and grasses used in that particular theme – in this case “Sommeraspekt”.

Their intent is clear: “Do try this at home”.

The focus is on how different plants associate together, often in quite complex ways. For me, this is the alchemical essence of what planting design is all about.

They also consider how the viewer experiences the plantings with a series of narrow and discreet gravel paths winding in and around each respective planting – enabling the visitor to see the plants up close.

On a practical level, the paths enable the gardeners to reach all points of the beds for maintenance. Needless to say, I was swept away by the beauty, scale and imagination of the place – circumambulating the entire garden twice – first walking, then up and down on my knees to capture it through my lens.

Of course, I just experienced the gardens at one particular moment in time – Hermannshof continually changes by design, offering a shifting kaleidoscope of fascination every day, every season of the year.

My visit coincided with the prairie-style meadows at their mid-summer peak with three types of north american native echinaceas blooming over a wave of complementary european and asian grasses and meadow species.

This is prairie, in the german sense of the word: a supercharged version of “prairie” using a wildly diverse plant palette linked by habitat to form a community. The overall effect, the details, the feeling, is sublime.

The following two images taken in early September by Dutch photographer Hans van Horssen illustrate how the plantings evolve over time.

It’s never enough to simply watch the magic show. I need to know how the tricks are done. And so, I was deeply curious to learn the mechanics of how they create and maintain their plantings.

Angela and I got some clues from one of their gardeners along with more info culled from an excellent two-pager found in their tiny book and seed shop.

In terms of perennial planting design, the garden is experimenting with two signature methods. The first was developed by director Cassian Schmidt to create gardens like their mixed prairie meadow in 2001.

Each distinct planting area of the prairie features a combination of 15–25 North American species along with feature plants and infill plants – some from different continents. Clump-forming or clonal species are preferred as they are typically not invasive.

Hermannshof: The Mixed Prairie Planting Method

• Set out feature perennials and grasses based on planting theme
• Fill in all gaps using a loose matrix of secondary theme plants scattered in a random pattern
• Allow generous space between plants
• Mulch with lava stone to minimize weeding and self-seeding
• Water to establish only during first year
• Allow plants to stand over winter
• Use strimmer or mulch-mower to cut back the planting in spring
• Loosely rake leaf litter together and burn off or remove

All these plants prefer nutrient-poor, zeric conditions. In fact, the prairie concept was developed to find a sustainable planting solution for similar dry conditions found in central europe. By testing it out at Hermannshof, they can easily adapt the approach to flourish in tough urban growing conditions in Germany.

The Mixed Perennial Plantings Method

Hermannshof is also collaborating with a number of German universities and researchers to develop ‘mixed perennial plantings’. They have created a series of plant lists devised for specific conditions with a fixed proportion of all the species and cultivars in a given mix.

This planting method is even simpler – with no special skills needed to install:

• Calculate the total square footage of planting area
• Buy total number of plants based on that number
• Set out the plants randomly but spaced at equal distances
• Water to establish in initial year

There are now 29 different perennial planting mixes being marketed in Germany through programs like Perennemix developed by Dr. Wolfram Kircher from Anhalt University in Bernburg.

Much like football, it’s this quality of thinking ahead that puts them out front.

If you’re looking to adapt something of these methods in your own garden, I highly recommend The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden, an excellent new guide by American master plantsman Roy Diblik who shares a connection with Cassian Schmidt.

Hermannshof: A Potted History

The story of Hermannshof begins over 200 years when it was the private estate of the powerful Freudenberg family. Its gardens and grounds were created by a succession of major landscape architects over time and there are still trees from the 18th century thriving in the garden.

After WWII, the estate was occupied by the Americans and later returned to the Freudenbergs, who took it under the wing of their industrial business group. Yet Hermannshof was still a garden in search of a greater context.

In the late 1970s, a family friend – the influential landscape architect and magazine editor, Gerda Gollwitzer suggested turning Hermannshof into a trial garden loosely based on Weihenstephan near Munich.

She brought in its director, Professor Richard Hansen who advanced the concept of making Hermannshof into a public experimental garden. It would be a centre for plant research and education along with a mandate to explore the design applications of perennial planting in public spaces.

Inspired by Hansen’s vision, the gardens were redesigned in a collaboration by landscape architect Hans Luz and Prof. Urs Walser, who developed the planting plans. A former student of Hansen, Walser based the plans on his teacher’s pioneering concept of grouping perennial plants by common habitat and growing conditions.

Crucially, Walser added a whole new aesthetic dimension to his teacher’s more functional approach – becoming Hermannshof’s first director in the process. Hermannshof opened its gates to the public in 1983 as a display and trial garden or “Schau-und Sichtungsgarten”.

It has grown ever since now with over 2,500 species and cultivars of herbaceous perennials and grasses, and 400 species of trees and shrubs. Right from day one, the admission has always been free.

Leave it to Germany to not only rack up the goals, but even better – to achieve them. For a garden-lover, this is a victory far sweeter than any mere trophy.