Herrenhausen Gardens - The Berggarten

The Berggarten

The Berggarten was created in 1666 as a vegetable garden for the Great Garden on a hill north of the Herrenhäuser Castle. Sophia of Hanover later transformed the Berggarten into a garden for exotic plants, and in 1686 a conservatory was erected.

The garden once served more than an aesthetic purpose - it was used to experiment with the breeding of plants normally native to southern lands in the northern climate of Lower Saxony. This experiment failed in its attempts to grow rice, but was successful with some other plants such as tobacco and mulberry. As a result, the silkworms located in the nearby city of Hamelin which were used in production of royal silk began to be fed with Herrenhäuser mulberry leaves in 1706. However, this experiment did not pay off long-term: in 1750 the Küchengarten in the neighboring city of Linden (now a district of the city of Hanover) took over the job of supporting the aristocracy with produce, and the Berggarten has since been exclusively a botanical garden.

Between 1817 and 1820, a caretaker's hut was built on the garden's grounds. In 1846, work began on the "Palm-house" (Palmenhaus), a conservatory designed by architect Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves and containing, as the name implies, palm trees. Within five years of its completion in 1849, the building housed the most valuable and extensive collection of palms in all of Europe. Work on the garden's mausoleum, also designed by Laves, lasted from 1842 to 1847; King Ernest Augustus I, who died one year after completion, was interred there with his wife Queen Frederica. It was also around this time (1845 to 1846) that walls and fences were added in order to make the Berggarten more secluded. In 1880, a larger building for the palm collection was built. Taking the form of a roughly 30 meter tall palace-like structure, the greenhouse - built out of glass and steel - houses both galleries and decorative fountains and replaced the previous Palmenhaus. Much of the garden had to be rebuilt bit by bit after British air raids destroyed much of the city in World War II. In 1952, the Garden Library - which now houses the garden's management - was built, and in 1957, further members of the Royal Family of Hanover were interred in the garden's mausoleum due to the rebuilding of the Leineschloss. The year 2000 saw the completion of a brand new "Rainforest-house (Regenwaldhaus), partially as a replacement for the legendary Palmenhaus (which was demolished in 1950) and partially for the Expo 2000. Inside is a tropical landscape containing more than plants - different species of tropical butterflies and birds were also incorporated into the environment. Further exhibits of the building include several displays themed gardens.