The Garden Society of Gothenburg
The Garden Society of Gothenburg is one of those great parks that began as a subscription enterprise for the increasingly rich middle classes in the 19th century. It was a place for them to stroll among flowers and trees without bumping into commoners.
Today it is considered one of the best-preserved examples of the genre in Europe. It is home to a spectacular Victorian glass house, beautifully planted beds and one of the largest rosariums in Scandinavia. And entry is free. More than two million visitors a year enjoy it.
The garden was the idea of a Swedish soldier and amateur botanist Captain Henric von Normann. He had visited Kew on his travels and admired the model of England’s Royal Horticultural Society.
It was 1842. The land the park sits on was marshland. Gothenburg was surrounded by imposing granite grey city walls. It desperately needed a green space. With gifts and loans from locals, von Normann soon raised the money.
The Palm House
Over time the garden developed, particularly under the management of legendary director Georg Löwegren, who was in charge from 1859 to 1916. He installed a beautiful 1,000m2 Palm House in the heart of the park – again funded by Garden Society of Gothenburg members. Modelled on London’s famous Crystal Palace, it was manufactured in Scotland and shipped over in kit form in the Autumn of 1878. So it wasn’t the Swedes who invented the flat pack!
When built, the palm house caused a sensation. Crowds queued to visit, despite the high ticket costs.
The building is divided into five sections: the main palm house (in the 15-metre-high nave), the mediterranean house, the camellia house, the tropical house and the water house. The climate and temperature are adapted for the plants in each section.
The park survived many difficulties. In 1941 the winter was so harsh locals set fire to anything they could to keep warm, including the garden’s archives. Most of the plants in the tropical house died. The park recovered post-war but by the 1970s as subscribers and ticket-buying visitor numbers dropped its future was again in balance.
The municipality of Gothenburg took control, declaring the park a listed historical site in 1992. Entrance has been free to the public since 2012.
Today the palm house still houses precious plants – like the dragon blood tree, which originates from the Canary Islands. It can grow six meters high and live for a thousand years. If the stem is damaged it oozes a blood-red resin, used, historically, in alchemy and herbal medicine. Though its medicinal qualities are unproven – I am being generous there – people would buy it from Swedish pharmacies right into the 20th century. The spectacular glass house was restored in the early 1980s and is currently undergoing another major restoration that will take four years.
The Rosarium
The rose garden is particularly special. Most of the roses were donated in 1987 – the lifetime collection of a Swedish priest, Göte Haglund. When first laid out there were 5,000 of them. But the rosarium highlights the challenges facing modern public parks and gardens. The Garden Society of Gothenburg has been organically maintained since 2000. Without insecticides or fungicides many of the old roses, particularly the Hybrid Teas, struggled and died.
Emmelie Georgii is in charge of the rosarium today – a role she started in March 2024. She recognises already the challenges ahead of her and the responsibilities of the role. She says: “Today we have perhaps 1300 roses in the garden. It’s not as many as there were but they are much healthier, so I think the effect is better.
“It’s hard to get the right balance. I don’t want to keep ‘shovel pruning’ each year – digging out dead roses and replacing them repeatedly. But I do want to do more to show the historical development of the rose and its taxonomy, which was something that mattered to Göte Haglund. I also want to show people that gardening organically works, too.”
Organic gardening
She adds: “We now grow the roses with perennials, annuals and bulbs to promote biological diversity and a richer soil. The Garden Society of Gothenburg is not one of those ‘stamp collection’ rosariums. We want the beds to be in flower for much of the season and to inspire people who are scared of growing roses and think they require too much work. We don’t water the old garden roses here. And we only prune and feed them once a year. But they thrive. Many of the 20th century roses require more care.”
The Swedish Rose Society maintains a collection of wild roses and hybrids in the park – the largest in the Nordic countries. These flower from early spring until late autumn, helping to create the best possible conditions for a rich insect life.
The rosarium has three themed areas to show how roses can be used in different ways (with a woodland rose garden planned next). One of the current areas is by Danish garden designer Jane Schul, another by Dutch designer Piet Oudolf and another by Swedish duo, designer Nina Thalinson and architect Gert Wingårdh. This third area is particularly exciting. It is a striking modern take on the Victorian sunken garden.
The Sunken Garden
The garden reinterprets “sunken” in a novel way. It echoes in its structure the frame of a ship, with horizontal and vertical steel ribs and dark wooden decking. Thalinson and Wingårdh were inspired by the wreck of the East India Company’s ship, Götheborg. The ship crashed into rocks just 3km from Gothenburg in 1745. Much of its valuable cargo of tea, porcelain, spices and silk was salvaged, but in the late 1980s a dive around the site excavated a total of 5,750 finds.
Among the wreckage were many pieces of broken blue and white porcelain. Thalinson and Wingårdh were given the opportunity to repurpose some of these shards. They have created a 13 metre long x 1 metre high blue and white mosaic wall with water cascading over it.
At the top of the wall a white bed, with plants like ‘Little White Pet’ and ‘Aspirin’ roses, gypsophila, pinky-white securigera, creates the impression of waves and surf. ‘New Dawn’ and ‘Mme Alfred Carriere’ roses climb up the frame.
The whole effect is stunning. It’s a place you want to sit in taking your fika – the Swedish equivalent of “coffee and cake” or afternoon tea.
Well worth a visit if you are there.