The garden is the only thing “worth envying in the little kingdom of Greece”, scorns Edmond About in 1852, a superfluity in a country in want for necessities. Maybe “hundred years hence... it will be beautiful”, comments Senior in 1857. A place of refuge from dust and heat, delights Bremer in 1858, its labyrinthine paths of orange groves “often remind me of the beautiful dreams of my childhood”.
Henry Miller commented famously on this historic Athens attraction: “It remains in my memory like no other park I have known”.
Queen Amalia Plans an Athens Garden
An urban landscaped garden was not only a novel concept for the Greeks in the 1830s but its creation stumbled upon scarcity of water and adverse climate conditions. However, Amalia of Oldenburg, the first Queen of Greece, a keen horticulturist, was determined to create a Kipos, a Garden adjacent to her Athens Palace. Plans for the Garden’s creation started just after Amalia’s marriage to King Otto in 1836 and developed over 25 years.
The space of what was to become the Royal Garden was demarcated by one of the most famous architects of Bavaria under King Ludwig I (Otto’s father), Friedrich Wilhelm von Gärtner, who was also the architect of the Palace in Athens. The Garden was redesigned in 1839 by Bavarian engineer, Hoch, while a horticulturalist team under Smarat or Schmarat started planting some 15,000 plants brought from Genoa and the Greek island of Euboea.
Instrumental in the design and landscaping of today’s National Garden were the French horticulturalist Francois Louis Bareaud, the Potsdam agronomist, Friedrich Schmidt and the botanist and plant collector, Carl Nikolaus Fraas. Fraas was appointed professor of botany in the newly-founded University of Athens in 1837 and ephore of all royal gardens.
Design and Features of Athens National Garden
The design of the Kipos follows the “German tradition of the Landschaftsgarten”, it is an arboretum of an irregular outline, densely planted, interspersed with romantic schemes and inspired by the “aesthetic values of the picturesque”. Despite being French, Louis Bareaud’s arrangement of the flora followed the English style (the jardin anglais) and not the geometrical precision of the French garden.
“It is an English garden full of winding paths”, Edmond About exclaims in 1852, “a gardener of the time of Louis XIV would be shocked at it”. The ancient remains found in the Royal Garden, including those of a Roman villa, were preserved and more romantic and antiquarian details were added: lakes, grotta, pergolas, fountains and pavilions, like Otto’s Hunting Pavilion (today a delightful café) and the neoclassical pavilion (today Botanical Museum).
National Garden Plants and Animals
The green space of the Kipos extends from Vassilis Sofias Avenue to the Handrian’s Gate and the Panathinaiko Stadium to the east. It was planted with various specimens of trees and shrubs from all over the world. Some of them including a colossal Pircunia Phytolaccaceae, an Indonesian Ailanthus and a Ginkgo Biloba survive to this day. Much of the flora did not survive the Greek climate and had to be constantly replaced.
The Garden attracted donations from as far as Brazil, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan and Haiti. The Queen was given 300 orange and lemon trees by the town of Sparta and created an orange grove while Bareaud planted one of the National Garden's trademarks, the monumental Palm tree line. Scarcity of water was a serious problem in the Garden’s early days and the Queen diverted part of the Athens water supply to the Kipos, a fact that caused popular discontent.
Over the years, various animals and birds have been kept in the Kipos including swans, flamingos, parrots, peacocks, ducks, tortoises, goats, lions, wolves.
National Garden, Historic Attraction Today
The Garden with its shady green spaces and alleys and its romantic hideaways has been an Athens attraction ever since the 19th century. Today it boasts 7,000 trees and some 40,000 shrubs. It used to be opened to the public only when Queen Amalia was not promenading but is today open to all from dusk to dawn.
The Kipos was renamed National Garden in 1927. It includes children’s playgrounds, a children's library and a picturesque coffee shop. Despite fierce opposition against its creation, it is today one of the main green spaces of Athens.
Sources:
Edmond About, La Gréce Contemporaine (1854), Dodo Press reprint.
N. Charkiolakis, M. Mikelakis, M. Psallida, "Historical Preview of the Recreational Parks and Botanical Gardens of Athens, Greece", WSEAS Transactions on Environment and Development, issue 11, vol. 4, November 2008.
Interview with former director of the National Garden, N. Tamvakis, in www.monumenta.gr (in Greek)
Photini Tomai, "The consul who wanted Queen Amalia happy", To Vima, 30 July 2006 in www.tovima.gr (in Greek)
Heinz Kalheber, “Bavarian plant collectors in Greece. Franz Xaver Berger, Franz Zuccarini and Carl Nikolaus Fraas", Willdenowia 36, 2006, 565-578.
Fredrika Bremer, Greece and the Greeks. The Narrative of a Winter Residence and Summer Travel in Greece and its Islands, vol. I, trans. Mary Howitt, Hurst and Blackett: London 1863
Nassau William Senior, A Journal Kept in Turkey and Greece, in the Autumn of 1857 and the Beginning of 1858, (Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts) London 1859
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