Karl Foerster's Garden in Potsdam-Bornim

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 90^th 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 !”