In The Landscape of Man, authors Susan Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe define landscape architecture as “the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes.” In conducting an aesthetic assessment of landscape architecture, there are many factors to consider: the interplay between “hard” (constructed) and “soft” (planted) materials, the urban or rural setting, and the integration of environmental sustainability, among others. All play into the space’s achievement of Jellicoe’s aforementioned “environmental, social-behavioral, and aesthetic” goals.
Copenhagen’s Botanisk Have (Danish for “Botanical Garden”) is a successful example of landscape architecture escapism amid an urban setting. The ten-hectare area beside Nørreport in Copenhagen was originally conceived in 1600—presumably to secure Copenhagen University’s collection of medicinal plants—and given its current location in 1870. Today, the garden serves educational and research purposes as part of the National History Museum of Denmark, as well as being a public recreational attraction. Overall, the garden holds over 13,000 plant species from around the world.
Judging empirically, the principle aesthetic effect of highly urban public parks is to break up the urban sprawl that surrounds them, providing city residents with a method of escape from their predominantly concrete setting. Botanisk Have accomplishes this desired effect in a number of ways. The topography of the garden and surrounding area is such that the grounds lie in a valley. Trees crowded near the garden’s edges further articulate this effect, such that the outer city is virtually invisible from any area inside. The bowl-shaped topography also allows for a central water feature around which the greenhouse area and garden paths are centered [fig. 1].
A notable feature in the garden’s design is the diversity of walkway materials. Perhaps inspired by American landscape architect Calvert Vaux, who co-designed Central Park in 1857, Botanisk Have’s designers included wood chip, cobblestone, gravel, smooth stone, and dirt walkways. Vaux, in the original Central Park plan, called for 36 bridges of distinct material and design. Botanisk Have’s paths, however, correspond to the different geographies of plants in the grounds, with sections allotted to Danish plants as well as perennial, annual, and rhododendron species.
The interaction between “hard” and “soft” garden materials plays a less combative role than in the more uptight designs at Hyde Park in London or Central Park in New York City. Despite clear daily maintenance of the grounds, Botanisk Have features numerous paths nearly overrun by the surrounding flora, such that passage becomes sometimes impossible—an inefficiency in the garden’s design, but something of a compliment to its aesthetics. Natural features here are intended to be tactile and unimpeded, in defiance to the gridlines that define the city blocks outside. Further, garden visitors have even carved paths up hillsides, much like migrating deer, trampling the grass in a straight vector between paved areas of different altitude. There are no signs or fences to discourage this behavior. Instead, the park designers prioritize an open and undirected design to the garden, adding features to help and not hinder their guests’ traversal through it. There’s a cohesive blend of order and entropy within the garden that gives it an exotic though not dangerously unfamiliar quality.
Another aspect to highlight the garden’s deliberate informality is the fact that none of the paths are named or marked to indicate their location. Personally, I found myself lost several times as a consequence of this effect. There is a clear contrast from the logistical precision of Copenhagen’s city streets.
The largest university greenhouse is something of a centerpiece of the garden. The greenhouse’s central dome, on an elevated foundation, towers above everything else in the garden, though is still largely invisible from outside. Thankfully, as with the garden’s paved walkways, the sea-green glass panes echoes the surrounding color palette and easy viewing experience the rest of the garden affords. For the most part, glare from the sun obscures the view inside, but the greenhouse manages to avoid an imposing posture on the grounds below it.
The greenhouses, in some respects, did serve to distract from the entrancing effect of the garden’s other features. So, too, did the occasional advertisements for the Museum of Natural History’s paid attractions. The harmony of natural and constructed elements works with the garden’s many humanoid copper statues, in the classical Greek fashion, paved walkways, and white wooden bridges. In my eyes, the smaller greenhouses and red-brick neo-Victorian administrative buildings fell short of this same metric. They took away from the immersive experience that the trees along the garden’s border otherwise insulated.
Overall, however, the garden succeeds in providing the escape from urban landscape in Copenhagen, better than in many American cities, in arguably more dire need. The grounds attract an audience of all ages, as well as educational opportunities on all academic levels. The effect is calming and centering, and appealing as a discounted wilderness experience—something good urban landscape architecture should be.
Figure 1: Picture of the Botanisk Have map, noting the water feature in the center and the greenhouses at the “top” of the grounds.
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