Top 10 Gardens in Germany
German garden culture draws on two great traditions: the baroque formalism that the German princely courts absorbed from Versailles in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and the English landscape garden that the enlightened German nobility adopted from the mid-eighteenth century onward. Both traditions are represented here in gardens of European significance.
Explore all ten on the interactive map.
1. Sanssouci, Potsdam, Brandenburg
The gardens of Sanssouci in Potsdam, created for Frederick the Great from 1745, are among the most important designed landscapes in Germany and part of the UNESCO World Heritage designation that covers all of Potsdam's royal parks. The terraced vineyards on the south-facing slope below the summer palace, each terrace with arched niches housing fig trees trained against the wall, are the garden's most distinctive feature. The Great Fountain, the Sicilian Garden, the Marble Palace park, and the New Palace's broad forecourt extend the site across nearly 300 hectares. Karl Friedrich Schinkel's architectural additions and Peter Joseph Lenné's later landscape work in the wider Potsdam parks make the whole area a coherent nineteenth-century designed landscape. Best season is May to September for the full garden programme.
2. Mainau Island (Insel Mainau), Lake Constance, Baden-Württemberg
Mainau, a 45-hectare island in Lake Constance, has been managed by the Bernadotte family since 1853 and combines formal Italian and baroque garden elements with an exceptional plant collection made possible by the island's mild lake climate. Bananas, bougainvillea, and subtropical plants thrive in the open air in a latitude where they would not survive on the mainland. The spring tulip and narcissus display, the rose garden with over 1,200 varieties, the dahlia show in autumn, and the butterfly house make Mainau a year-round destination. The lakeside setting and the view across the Bodensee to the Alps are part of the experience. Best seasons are April to May for spring and July to September for roses and dahlias.
3. Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz (Wörlitzer Park), Saxony-Anhalt
Wörlitz, the centrepiece of the UNESCO-listed Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz, is the earliest landscape garden in continental Europe, begun in 1764 by Prince Leopold III Franz of Anhalt-Dessau after his Grand Tour of England. The Wörlitz park, 112 hectares, combines English landscape garden principles — serpentine paths, irregularly shaped lakes, picturesque incidents — with a serious philosophical programme derived from the Enlightenment: temples, bridges, and grottoes allude to classical and contemporary texts. The Rousseau Island, with its single poplar like the tomb at Ermenonville, is the garden's most explicit literary reference. The park is navigable by punt on the lakes, which is the most satisfying way to see it. UNESCO inscription in 2000.
4. Schloss Schwetzingen, Baden-Württemberg
Schwetzingen, the summer palace of the Electors of the Palatinate near Heidelberg, has one of the most interesting garden histories in Germany: a large, formally regular parterre garden (c.1700) was extended in the 1750s with an English landscape section designed by Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell. The result is a garden that contains both formal French-influenced garden making and landscape garden design side by side, allowing direct comparison within a single site. The circular parterre with its hedge theatre, the ornamental bath house, the Turkish mosque (a baroque folly), and the bird circle are the most notable individual elements. Best season is spring and early summer for the parterre.
5. Wilhelma, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg
The Wilhelma in Stuttgart, created as a private Moorish-style bath complex and garden for King Wilhelm I of Württemberg in the 1840s, opened as a combined botanical garden and zoological garden in 1953 and now operates as Germany's only combined botanical and zoological institution open to the public. The neo-Moorish architecture of the original bathhouse complex, the azalea house (spring blooms are spectacular), the magnolia grove, and the extensive camellia collection give the botanical section a character distinct from any other German garden. The Wilhelma holds Germany's largest collection of orchids and bromeliads.
6. Grosser Garten, Dresden, Saxony
The Grosser Garten in Dresden, laid out from 1676, is one of the oldest baroque gardens in Saxony and the largest park in Dresden. The central allée leads to the late baroque summer palace of the Electors of Saxony; the surrounding parterre has been restored following its destruction in the 1945 bombing. The garden is notable for its botanic garden section (Botanischer Garten Dresden), its Japanese garden, and the extensive tree collections. The miniature railway that runs around the garden is both a children's attraction and a practical way to cover the site's 1.8 kilometres of main allée. Best in spring and summer.
7. Branitzer Park, Cottbus, Brandenburg
Branitzer Park, the last great work of Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau (1785-1871), was created from 1845 on flat, poor-soil land near Cottbus that offered none of the natural advantages of his earlier masterpiece at Bad Muskau. Pückler's response was to work on an epic scale: creating two large earthwork pyramids in the lake (one of which contains his tomb), reshaping the flat Lusatian landscape into a convincing English landscape garden, and planting an estimated three million trees. The park demonstrates the English landscape ideal pushed to its expressive extreme. Now managed as a museum garden; the castle houses the Pückler museum.
8. Park an der Ilm (Goethe's Garden), Weimar, Thuringia
The Park an der Ilm in Weimar, developed from 1778 under the influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (who designed sections himself and managed the park for decades), is the most intellectually significant landscape garden in Germany. Goethe's own garden house — the Gartenhaus — sits at the park's heart, and the design reflects his ideas about the relationship between nature, art, and human cultivation. The park, part of the UNESCO Classical Weimar World Heritage Site, stretches along the Ilm river for three kilometres, combining meadow, woodland, Roman House (a neoclassical villa), and numerous literary memorials.
9. Herrenhausen Gardens, Hannover, Lower Saxony
Herrenhausen, the summer residence gardens of the Hanoverian Electors (and the British royal family to whom they were connected by the Act of Settlement of 1701), contains the Grosser Garten: one of the largest surviving baroque gardens in Europe at 50 hectares. The Grosser Garten, designed by Sophia of the Palatinate in the 1690s with the assistance of Le Nôtre's pupil Martin Charbonnier, preserves its original layout almost entirely intact. The high jet fountain (reaching 82 metres), the hedge theatre, the maze, and the grotto decorated with work by the artist Niki de Saint Phalle are major attractions. Best season is summer for the full fountain programme.
10. English Garden (Englischer Garten), Munich, Bavaria
The English Garden in Munich, created from 1789 by Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) and landscape designer Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, is one of the largest urban parks in the world at 370 hectares, larger than New York's Central Park. It was designed as a public park for the citizens of Munich at a time when most European parks were aristocratic preserves. The Chinese pagoda, the Monopteros temple, the Japanese tea house, and the famous surfing wave on the Eisbach channel (a standing wave used by surfers year-round) are the most photographed features. The beer gardens here — including the one under the Chinese Pagoda — are among Munich's most beloved public spaces.
Visiting Germany's gardens
The concentration of major gardens around Potsdam and Berlin (Sanssouci, the wider Potsdam UNESCO parks), the Rhineland (Schwetzingen day trip from Heidelberg), and Bavaria (Herrenhausen, Wilhelma by rail) make several regional circuits practical. Wörlitz requires a dedicated trip to Dessau. Most major gardens are open year-round; summer visits coincide with fountain programmes and peak seasonal displays.
Use the map to plan your German garden itinerary by region.