The New Garden (German: Neuer Garten) in Potsdam is a park of 102.5 hectares located southwest of Berlin, Germany, in northern Potsdam and bordering on the lakes Heiliger See and Jungfernsee. Starting in 1787, Frederick William II of Prussia (1744-1797) arranged to have a new garden laid out on this site, and it came to be known by this rather prosaic name. The New Garden is one of the ensembles comprising the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin,” a status awarded in 1990.
When he was still crown prince, Frederick William II procured property situated on lake Heiliger See, supplementing it later by the purchase of adjoining fruit gardens and vineyards. One year after his accession to the throne work began on creating a park which in the spirit of the times was supposed to reflect contemporary garden architecture, setting it apart from the then out of fashion baroque ornamental and kitchen grounds of Frederick the Great‘s nearby Sanssouci.
On visits to the small principality of Anhalt-Dessau the king had become acquainted with the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm (now a UNESCO World Heritage Site). This park was the earliest and largest English landscape park on the continent and corresponded to the king’s ideal of a garden. The Wörlitz gardener Johann August Eyserbeck was engaged to realize this concept also in Potsdam.
In contrast to the extensive English landscape gardens of the 19th century, whose primary elements were trees, meadows and water, the English garden of the 18th century was characterized by relatively discrete regions decorated with small architectural elements. The landscape character was emphasized in a design intended to reproduce nature. The trees and plants were not to be shaped and trimmed, but left to grow naturally. Rural life was also “rediscovered” in the process. Browsing cows were part of the scene in the New Garden, with their milk being processed to butter and cheese in a dairy at the northwest corner of the park (it is now a lakeshore restaurant). Summer houses which existed on the property were incorporated in the planning and have survived to the present. They are designated by their color: the Brown, Red or Green House.
Much later in 1816 during the reign of Frederick William III, Peter Joseph Lenné, at the time still a journeyman gardener apprentice, arrived in Potsdam and was given the task of redesigning the neglected and overgrown garden. While retaining some of the existing garden units he created an English landscape garden with extensive open spaces, lawns and wide pathways, and especially lines of sight to the Pfaueninsel, Glienicke, Babelsberg and Sacrow.
