Danish Gardens 
By Erik Erstad-Jorgensen 
We Danes are prone to complain about our climate and to think 
it worse than that of any other country. I cheerfully admit that the 
wind blows a little more than necessary for comfort and that we often 
have sleet in the winter. Nor can it be denied that the farmer has 
reason to complain about the dry spring and the often rainy autumn. 
But take it all in all, we are really not aggrieved so far as our climate 
is concerned, and this can best be seen by comparing our gardens 
with those of the surrounding countries. Many of the trees and 
shrubs, especially many evergreen plants, which thrive beautifully in 
our gardens cannot stand the wdnter in Sweden or Germany. In Nor¬ 
way climatic conditions vary; out on the west coast the ocean stream 
keeps the hard frost away so that Lebanon cedars and araucaria grow 
as large as in England, while gardeners around Christiania have only 
a very limited variety of plants at their disposal. 
On the Danish islands vegetation flourishes. Among our neigh¬ 
bors only England has still better conditions for gardening than we. 
It is therefore reasonable that the art of gardening has always stood 
comparatively high here at home, and the increasing interest in gar¬ 
dens, which has been characteristic of the last decades in all of northern 
Europe, has not been less evident here than in other places. 
We have not a little left of gardens from olden times. In the 
days of autocracy, when Denmark was larger than it is now, many 
palaces were built with adjoining parks and gardens under whose 
leafy branches Danish children still play. “The King’s Garden” in 
Copenhagen and in Odense are old palace parks. The parks of 
Frederiksberg, Sondermarken, Fredensborg, and Frederiksborg were 
all originally laid out in the “French garden style” with linden alleys 
and clipped hedges, fountains and cascades, summer-houses of lattice 
work, labyrinths and sandstone figures and artistically drawn box 
parterres. Only the large lines still recall the old style: the mag¬ 
nificent linden alleys and terraces, and a few scattered box-hedges still 
remain standing as they have through centuries. But these old trees, 
planted by people many generations back, which have folded out their 
leaves anew for so many springs, through whose crowns the storms 
have whistled, and under whose leaves birds have built their nests year 
after year, these venerable ancients among all trees, possess a spirit 
and an atmosphere which cannot easily be overestimated, and fortu¬ 
nately their value is appreciated in our day so that all will be preserved 
which must not necessarily give way to the just claims of the present. 
At the time when these veterans were planted it was almost exclu¬ 
sively kings and rulers who laid out gardens. Later the larger estate 
