History and Restoration of the St. Petersburg Summer Garden: Returning to the Roots

Abstract

In 2014 the oldest garden in St Petersburg, Russia, the Summer Garden, celebrated three hundred and ten years since its foundation. The history of the Summer Garden began in 1704 by order of Tsar Peter the Great, who commissioned numerous talented foreign and Russian architects and gardeners to design a garden complex around his new palace. The garden reached its peak in the mid-eighteenth century, but in 1777 was largely destroyed by a flood, following which it was transformed into one of the most cherished of St Petersburg’s public spaces. A recent restoration of the Summer Garden (completed in 2012) was controversial, but it demonstrated the ability and skill of the Russian School of Historic Gardens Restoration. This paper discusses the history of the Summer Garden with particular emphasis paid to the dynamics of the garden’s vegetation over three centuries, together with the principles and results of its latest restoration.

Keywords

garden history; garden restoration and conservation

Published in

Garden History
2015, volume: 43, number: 2, pages: 199-217

SLU Authors

• Ignatieva, Maria

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Landscape Architecture

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/73432