Following the example of Humphry Repton, Prince Pückler had Branitz Park designed as a zoned landscape park. The intensity of the design increases steadily from the outside to the inside, with the Palace ensemble at the centre of the park. The Palace ensemble is surrounded by the Pleasureground, which was richly decorated with sculptures, arbours, flower beds and exotic shrubs. It is surrounded by the Inner Park as a concentrated and idealised natural environment.
The Outer Park finally forms the end of the zoning. Prince Pückler designed it according to the English model as a so-called ornamental farm. The basic idea of such a decorated farm, which Pückler liked to call ferme ornée in French, is to combine the useful with the beautiful. Through the skilful arrangement of the fields and meadows used for agriculture, as well as the forest areas and pastures, Pückler created in Branitz an ideal-typical combination of agriculture and garden art. The fields and meadows were divided into small parcels of land and the crops grown on them were arranged in a coordinated crop rotation. Several hundred sheep were used to care for the meadows and pastures. To beautify the agricultural areas, woody plants and shrubs were also used in the garden design.
‘Proud by birth and liberal by thought and judgment.’
‘the greenest of the oases’
‘Splendour and taste in the highest combination’