INTERVIEW WITH HANS VON TROTHA

In his latest book The Garden - Its History in 333 Pictures, historian and garden expert Hans von Trotha takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of gardens, showing how gardens have conveyed not only aesthetic but also philosophical and social messages over centuries. Von Trotha describes the garden as a unique medium that appeals to all senses and builds a bridge between nature and art.

In an interview with Hatje Cantz, he talks about why he doesn't tend his own garden, but admires gardens as works of art. He shares his insights into the symbolic power of gardens, which embody themes such as love, death, and infinity, and addresses the challenges that contemporary garden culture faces in the age of climate change. Whether romantic retreats or societal reflections – von Trotha's perspectives on the garden encourage us to see these special places with new eyes and discover their multifaceted meaning.

Hatje Cantz: Mr. von Trotha, first of all, congratulations on your new book: The Garden – Its History in 333 Pictures. A first question that comes to mind: do you have a garden yourself? And if so, what does it look like?

Hans von Trotha: I am a theoretician. The book shows that. And an old rule states: He who masters the theory and history of gardens is poor at botany and gardening – and vice versa. I am often in gardens, but I don't have my own. I read gardens more like books, admire them as works of art, and review them like films.

Claude Monet: The Luncheon on the Grass, 1866

HC: You describe the garden as an all-encompassing medium that appeals to all senses. What personally fascinates you most about the phenomenon of the garden?

HT: The complexity with which messages are conveyed sensually here, actually involving all senses. This can be incredibly exciting and, yes, even blissful. One only has to accept and understand that this is not a nice-to-have, a bit of landscaped lawn behind the house, but actually, if well done, a complex medium that for many centuries has primarily expressed one thing sensually: the respective relationship of an era to nature. That's why historical gardens are so incredibly insightful for us today. You can learn how brave, innovative, imaginative, and resourceful people from other eras and regions have been in dealing with nature.

HC: Based on 333 images spanning over 1000 years, you tell the story of the garden. What criteria did you use for this selection, and is there one image that is particularly close to your heart?

HT: 333 is a lot, but at the same time, it's an extreme reduction. That was the most difficult part of working on the book. The criterion was always that something could be told from the image and that the images would form a story, namely the history of the garden. It would be the same story, even if there were other images, which of course would almost always be possible. Many of the images have indeed grown dear to me over the decades. I dream of gathering them in an exhibition one day. One that particularly moves me I placed at the beginning, the study of a garden, surrounded by walls, by François Desportes, created around 1700. It shows the constitutive element of the garden, the boundary, here as a wall, and at the same time illustrates the enormous projection potential of all gardens. And the small, locked door reminds me of the end of Heinrich von Kleist's wonderful essay On the Marionette Theatre, which states: "Paradise is locked...; we must make the journey around the world, and see if it might be open again somewhere from behind."

Crispin de Passe d.J: Hortus Floridus, Frontispiece: Spring, Utrecht, 1614/1616

HC: In your introduction, you discuss the symbolic meaning of nature, love, death, and infinity in gardens. These are major themes of human thought. How is this symbolism reflected in the design of historical gardens, and how might it have affected observers?

HT: Infinity is always a theme in every garden, because its subject is nature, which is infinite by its very essence. There are two objects through which man can experience nature: God and nature. In the garden, it is always nature first, then, for those who wish, and over many centuries and in many cultures, that is most people, also God. With the natural and the association of paradise, love is always in play, especially sensual love, eroticism, sex. Gardens have always been places where this was lived out. Finally, with nature, death is also always present in the garden; it simply belongs to life, quite naturally. These are the elementary sensual experiences of the world that are brought together in the garden in nuce, as a concentrate. When this is done at a high reflexive, artistic, and craftsmanship level, it is simply overwhelming.

HC: You mention that from the 19th century onwards, the garden was increasingly depicted in artistic media such as painting, photography, and film. How did these new media representations influence the understanding and perception of gardens?

HT: Two things happen in parallel: The garden as a great art form increasingly dissolves. This is also where the book ends. This has philosophical, and subsequently aesthetic, but above all social reasons. In bourgeois society, the garden takes on new, very different functions. Gardens simultaneously become a public matter, with public gardens and city parks, and at the same time retreats into the completely private sphere. This is a new chapter. Flowers play an extremely important role here, which did not play such a large role in the grand forms of garden art from the 15th to the 19th centuries. People now find the great themes of nature, love, death, infinity not in the garden, but either in nature itself - or in music, literature, painting, and finally in film. This is a consequence of the romantic demand to experience the infinity of everything (of nature, love, death...) directly, not merely as a quote or allusion. A garden cannot achieve that. A garden always thrives on suggestion, because its definition is always the boundary. That's what makes it so refined as an art form. But it must inevitably fail at infinity itself.

Jakob Philipp Hackert: The English Garden in Caserta, 1793

HC: You also address the ecological and social significance of gardens over the centuries. In your opinion, what role do these places play today in relation to the most urgent challenge of our time: climate change?

HT: The garden designer, teacher, and philosopher Gilles Clément speaks of the garden as an ark, a protected place where species could survive, and says that today we must garden "planetarily," meaning that with every action, every thought in the garden, we must always keep the entire planet in mind, acting and thinking for the planet. In this way, gardens can directly, genuinely help nature. Even more, they can help us develop or, rather, redevelop our awareness of what nature is, what a miracle it is, what lies within it. And this, as I said, becomes particularly clear when studying historical gardens. That was a decisive motivation for me to want to create this book, as a contribution.

Header image Hans von Trotha © Hans Duefelsiek