Malmö’s Castle Park
Photo: David Castor / dcastor / CC0 1.0, modified.
Overview
The Japanese Garden in Malmö’s Castle Garden is a modern themed garden within Slottsträdgården, the ecological public garden beside Malmöhus Castle. Malmö City’s official page describes it as inspired by modern Japanese garden art and Zen Buddhism, with black pine and Chinese dogwood growing in a “sea” of granite. The official designer credit is John Taylor.
History
Slottsträdgården itself is a late twentieth-century garden inserted into the historic park landscape between Kungsparken and Slottsparken, two of Malmö’s older public parks. The idea for the ecological garden emerged in the mid-1990s from local garden enthusiasts, after the city’s former nursery and garden-service area had become underused. Malmö City states that the garden was officially inaugurated on 8 May 1998 and was first run by Slottsträdgårdens vänner until the City of Malmö took over operations in 2003.
The Japanese Garden belongs to this Slottsträdgården phase and should be kept separate from an older, small Japanese garden in Slottsparken, which Swedish park-history sources say had been laid out by city gardener Birger Myllenberg and recreated in 1988. In other words: Malmö has overlapping castle-park names and at least two Japanese-garden references nearby, because apparently one naming confusion was not enough. For this database item, “Malmö’s Castle Garden” most likely refers to the Slottsträdgården Japanese Garden designed by John Taylor.
Design features
The Slottsträdgården Japanese Garden is a compact modern contemplative garden rather than a traditional pond-strolling garden. Its main composition uses sparse planting, black pine, Chinese flowering dogwood, bridge movement and a granite “sea” to create a calm Zen-inspired environment. The design is therefore best recorded as a modern Japanese garden within a public ecological / themed garden setting.
Current status
Extant public themed garden area within Slottsträdgården, Malmö’s ecological castle garden beside Malmöhus Castle. It remains freely accessible as one of the garden’s named theme gardens.
The rock garden no longer exists.