Von Siebold Memorial Garden
Photo: Xsandriel / CC BY-SA 4.0, modified.
Overview
The Von Siebold Memorial Garden is a Japanese-style memorial garden in the Hortus botanicus Leiden, created to honour Philipp Franz von Siebold and his role in introducing Japanese plants to the Netherlands and Europe. The garden was laid out in 1990 for the 400th anniversary of the Hortus and was designed by Prof. M. Nakamura, then head of landscape architecture at Kyoto University.
History
The Hortus botanicus Leiden was founded in 1590 and is the oldest botanical garden in western Europe. Its Japanese plant connections are strongly linked to Philipp Franz von Siebold, who sent living plants from Japan to Leiden from 1829 onward. The Clusiusstichting notes that many trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants reached Leiden through Siebold’s activities, and that some plants from those introductions still grow in the Hortus.
A bronze bust of Von Siebold by O. Wenckebach was unveiled in the Hortus in 1932. For the 400th anniversary of the Hortus in 1990, the Clusiusstichting decided to create a Japanese-style memorial garden that would give the bust, part of the East Asian plant collection and Siebold’s symbolic role in Dutch-Japanese relations a coherent setting. Prof. M. Nakamura was invited from Kyoto to design the garden.
The garden was laid out around a historic Japanese elm / Zelkova serrata, introduced from Japan by Von Siebold around 1830. Hortus material states that the Von Siebold Memorial Garden was created around this historic tree in 1990, and notes that its gravel symbolically represents water connected with the Main, the river of Siebold’s birthplace Würzburg, flowing toward the Rhine and the Netherlands.
Design features
The core of the garden is a karesansui, or dry landscape garden, with rock compositions and gravel representing a waterfall flowing into a water surface with islands. Narrow winding paths lead visitors through Asian plantings toward stepping stones and a pavilion. The garden also incorporates the historic Zelkova serrata and the Von Siebold bust, combining botanical memory, Japanese garden symbolism and Dutch-Japanese cultural history.
Garden elements
Buildings
Enclosures
Stones
Current status
Extant Japanese memorial garden within Hortus botanicus Leiden. It remains part of the botanical garden’s visitor route and is accessible with normal Hortus admission.