Today we
visited in Potsdam-Bornim the garden of the Great Master, Karl August Foerster
(1874 – 1970). I use the words “Great Master” without irony: he was an
exceptionally gifted perennial cultivator and garden-book author. Powerfully eloquent. Visionary. A
sorcerer.
Born in
1874, (his father was Professor Wilhelm Foerster, an astronomer from Silesia, Director of the
Berlin Observatory, his mother Ina Paschen). After his A-levels he was apprentice in Schwerin Castle
Nursery, then developed his first own nursery in Berlin-Westend 1903 – 1907. 1906
first publications in the press „Pan
und Psyche“, 1911his first book, „Hardy Flowering Perennials and Shrubs from the
Modern Era”. He writes for journals and gives
talks on radio, founds the garden design department in Bornim with Hermann Mattern,
creates a public garden on the „Friendship Island“ in Potsdam. Among his friends
is the pianist Wilhelm Kempf. 1927 he
marries the singer Eva Hildebrandt from Stettin.
Foerster became
Germany’s most famous cultivator of perennials: 1920 First cultivation of Delphinium elatum
(1939 Member of the English Delphinium Society), 1932 first of many Phlox
paniculata cultivations, and Heliopsis
and 1940 Helenium.
The book I
love best is „Garden as a Magic Key“ (Rowohlt 1934). It is much more than a
garden book – a book with a philosophy of living and an ode to beauty:
„Beauty
opens up and evens out roads between the visible and invisible world", he writes, and: "Where there is too little beauty, there is quarrel!"
Here an
example of his gift to fabulate:
„Man can
become like a half-god to us, music gets one with the breath of the world’s history,
a moving animal can become almost fleeting by ravishing beauty, a blossom a light jewel, age can become the morning of the
earth and winter’s scantiness the treasury of a million-voiced
music.“
1940 publishing of „Blue Treasure of the Gardens“ (from which I quote
in my post „Blue Gardens“ on Gardeninginhighheels.blogspot.com).
The Soviet
military administration 1945 takes over protection of the nursery for ‚cultivation
and research into herbacious perennials‘. 1950 Honorary doctorate awarded by Humboldt
University in Berlin, 1959 freedom of the
city of Potsdam, 1964 nominated as professor on the occasion of his 90th
birthday, 1966 First honorary member of the ISU, 1969 Certificate for
Outstanding Achievement awarded by Latvian Horticultural Society.
1968 publishing
of his book “Es wird durchgeblüht!” („It must be flowered through!“)
I can
imagine that Gertrude Jekyll (born 1843 in London) and Foerster would have
understood each other beautifully. “If something is worth to be done, it is
worth to be done well” was Getrude’s philosophy, and she was it who put
gardening back into the rank of Fine Arts.
Foerster’s
garden in Bornim is separated into different sections after the English role
model: spring path, natural garden, autumn borders, rock garden of seven (!) seasons
etc. The heart of the garden is a “sunken garden” with a waterbasin planted with water
lilies.
All overall spilling abundance of plants and stern geometry, architectonical
and natural principles of design are completing each other. The different
levels allow to look very attentively at the plants and to look from above on
to the sea of flowers of perennials, shrubs and grasses.
Visitors
are welcomed. The garden and the house are under protection of a country’s historical
heritage since 1982, and since 1998 a vast reconstruction of the sunken garden, the
spring path, the rock garden and the autumn path was done.
If you come
to Potsdam and love gardens, I recommend you to take the short drive to Bornim!
And you
mightl agree with me that Karl Foerster remarked so rightly:
“Search – and you
will find (together with that; my words) something quite different !”
