Pleasure ground

The pleasure ground is an area of garden near to a building in landscape gardens of English style that, in contrast to the outlying park, stresses artistic elements over the more natural elements.

The German landscape gardener, Hermann, Prince of Pückler-Muskau, explained the meaning of this term in his 1834 publication Andeutungen über Landschaftsgärtnerei ("Ideas On Landscape Gardening") as follows:

Pückler-Muskau's description refers to one of the three elements of the English landscape garden that are, from the outer perimeter of the estate to its main building, the park, the pleasure ground and the flower gardens. Usually there was also a flower-bedecked terrace on the house itself so that the transition from the open countryside to the house was in several stages.

The type of garden known as the pleasure ground in the shape of an ornamented area of lawn right next to the house was already known in England during the Renaissance, and from the second half of the 18th century it became very popular. Encouraged by the landscape architect, Humphry Repton, this division of the grounds of a country house spread to Germany around 1800 and was employed inter alia by Prince Pückler-Muskau and Peter Joseph Lenné, who made use of it in their designs at Muskau, Glienicke and Babelsberg. The first pleasure ground in Prussia is probably that laid out at Glienicke Palace by Lenné in 1816.

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