Augsburg Botanical Garden
Photo: Burkhard Mücke / CC BY-SA 4.0, modified.
Overview
The Japanese Garden in Augsburg Botanical Garden was created for the Bavarian State Garden Show / Landesgartenschau Augsburg 1985. It covers about 4,200 m² and was supported by Augsburg’s Japanese partner cities Amagasaki and Nagahama, marking the 25th anniversary of the city friendship. The garden was designed by Japanese landscape architect Yoshikuni Araki.
History
Augsburg Botanical Garden itself opened on its present site in 1936 as a municipal teaching and display garden. By the early 1980s the city was preparing the 1985 Landesgartenschau, connected to Augsburg’s 2,000-year city jubilee. In 1981, the city council decided to hold the garden show and to redesign parts of the Botanical Garden, expanding it to around ten hectares. The official groundbreaking for the Landesgartenschau took place in September 1982.
On 8 February 1984, Augsburg City Council decided to create another Japanese garden in the Botanical Garden together with its Japanese partner cities Amagasaki and Nagahama. This was explicitly separate from the earlier Rudolf-Diesel-Gedächtnishain dry landscape garden in Wittelsbacher Park, created in 1957. The new garden opened with the Landesgartenschau on 19 April 1985, and most themed garden areas created for the exhibition were retained and further developed after the show closed.
Design features
The Augsburg Botanical Garden Japanese Garden is a pond landscape garden rather than a dry garden. German summaries describe it as a Teichgarten, chosen partly because Augsburg already had a Japanese dry landscape garden at Wittelsbacher Park. Its composition uses stone, water and planting, including a stream, pond landscape, carefully placed stones, stone lanterns and shaped trees. Around 400 tons of granite from the Fichtelgebirge were used in the stone arrangements.
Garden elements
Bridges
Buildings
Enclosures
Waters and islands
Stones
Other elements
Current status
Extant Japanese pond garden within Augsburg Botanical Garden. It remains one of the garden’s main themed areas and is accessible during normal botanical garden opening hours.