An English Garden in Germany: Satis Shroff

ETTENBÜHL: AN ENGLISH GARDEN IN GERMANY (SATIS SHROFF)

Forty years ago Ettenbühl was a tract of agricultural land with meadows. It was turned into a five hectar English landscape and has now 26 garden space with over 100 special wood, thousands of roses and flowery bushes.

It all began in 1975 as a private garden. In 1998 Gisela Seidel and her daughter Stephanie Körner decided to take the challenge and make something special out of Ettenbühl, a sleepy hamlet. That was the beginning of Landhaus Ettenbühl in 1999.

An English garden without a native gardener? In the year 2000 a genuine English gardener and rose specialist named  John Scarman joined the team and he stayed till 2012. The landhouse grew and a restaurant, café and a gardening school added. Today, you have visitors from Switzerland, Germany and Alsace (France).

You can saunter along Granny’s Walk, which has lovely roses, past the very English restaurant and café, and along the Yellow Brick Road. The tall Leyland cypresses had to be abandoned because they didn’t thrive in the Markgräfler climate, even though it has the reputation of being the Tosca of Germany.

You come across the Pfingstrose (peony) garden, which is a sunken garden, where you are rewarded with the sight of peonies (Strauchpäonien). In the pond garden you see the pergola with wisteria and roses and in the long pond you’re greeted by Koi carps. They’re amusing to watch. Now and then, they come to the surface and their big mouths wide, as though they were yawning, and swim back to the 1,8m deep pond.

It’s past 7pm and I’m seated on a bench in the English garden, listening to the birds on the trees above the rose garden. A chirp-chirp, followed by a chorus of sparrows. There’s a long pond where I sit and the hidden water-pump makes the water emit a bubbling sound. A few lotus flowers are swimming among the many flat, round leaves. I count at least six lotus buds. A big orange fish raises its head between the wet leaves and dives again and swims to another part of the pond. The big orange fishes prefer to remain deeper and swim about. There are roses everywhere in the garden. A cuckoo starts with its repertoire. Perhaps it has deposited its eggs in the nest of another bird and is singing merrily.   

Lunch was delicious: a Thai dish with vegetables, crevette and chicken served with Basmati rice and caramelised cashew and peanuts. Had to wait a bit for the meal to be served because there were three busloads of hungry tourists out to see the roses of Ettenbühl.

Am here for the second time in Ettenbühl after 2015 and it looks even lovelier with lavender and roses blooming everywhere.

You take a walk along the woods and admire the hundreds of Christmas roses and narcissus, a genus of bulbous plants which also includes daffodils and jonquil with white flowers. The lavender garden is located near a Middle Age cloister garden and you see it’s full of roses and herbaceous perennial plants. Some of the historical roses in the cloister garden are over 40 years old, I am told.

In case you’re looking for a lovely ambient for your wedding celebration there’s the Hochzeitsgarten with a pavilion, where you can tie the nuptial knot in style. You can also see the baroque Buchsgarten comprising evergreen shrubs with dark leathery leaves.  The larkspurs ,Pfingstroses, are everywhere here in addition to philadelphus and buddleja, a shrub with lilac or yellow flowers.                                                                     .

Other places of interest are the Potager, with an alley of trees, vegetables, herbs and edible plants and a replica of the Taj Mahal after the Moghul gardens. There’s even a lilac meadow which would have delighted Jane Austin, with different varieties of lilacs.

June is the month of roses, the Queen of Flowers, in Ettenbühl. The scents of the roses hang in the air and arrest your senses. Then there are the lavender and Rittersporn, larkspur also called delphinium, flowers.

When you’re in Ettenbühl with a car you can’t resist the temptation of taking at least two varieties of roses for your own garden. They don’t need much space but the bed has to be deep. The florists Silke Hegewald and Andrea Seamann were very helpful with their gardening tips. Gardeners are wonderful people to talk with everywhere.

The summer picknick was a delight. For breakfast you can choose between Frühstück Jardinier and Gentleman Gardener’s breakfast comprising fruit, salad, fruit joghurt, house-made Birchermüsli, the Swiss and Germans love it,. The croissants were real tasty, full corn buns, fresh country eggs, bacon, cheese and self-made strawberry marmalades and jams. They even serve the classical English breakfast—like in merry olde England.   

©satisshroff,2019