Schlosspark Rheda, Castle park in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany
Schlosspark Rheda is a historic garden and park in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, North Rhine-Westphalia. The castle garden covers about 1 hectare, with parts integrated into the Flora Westfalica grounds for a total of about 5 hectares; together with surrounding park and forest areas it forms an ensemble of about 25 hectares. It lies in the Ems floodplain south of Rheda's old town and includes an orangery garden with box trees and a water basin, an apothecary garden under a large beech, and a former hunting preserve.
A medieval tree garden with a pond served the castle's court before 1623, when a geometrically divided garden enclosed by a moat on three sides was documented northwest of the main island, following Dutch models. Around 1730 over 300 espalier fruit trees lined the main path and melons were grown. In the 19th century a commercial nursery with greenhouses and a tree school operated here, and from 1842 the garden was open to the public. Court gardener Josef Poppe redesigned the ornamental section around 1900; it was reconstructed from original plans between 1985 and 1988.
The gardens were recreated using plans from the 19th century, featuring plants and water features from that era within boxed hedges. Visitors can see how the space was designed to be experienced through different garden rooms.
The park is easy to walk through with wide, level paths connecting the garden sections. Starting from the north entrance gives convenient access to both the castle gardens and the adjacent botanical park.
In 2004 Rosamunde Pilcher visited her great-niece Marissa, wife of Maximilian zu Bentheim-Tecklenburg, at Schloss Rheda, and a rose in the castle garden was named after her. From 2003 to 2016 the park hosted the garden festival "Frühling im Park", which drew guests such as the publicist Asfa-Wossen Asserate and actress Gudrun Landgrebe.
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