“White and green are the ultimate for me”

“The art of the garden”. This was the title of Klaus Klein’s lecture at the end of last year at the Seidl Villa in Munich, organized by the DGGL LV Bayern-Süd. Behind the title is Roland Weber, a German landscape architect who lived and worked in Düsseldorf from 1909 to 1997. He created over 900 gardens in Germany and abroad and worked with well-known architects. What made him special and what can we learn from him? Read for yourself.

Photos: WKM Landscape Architects, Düsseldorf.

Using the garden as an example, Klaus Klein explained Roland Weber’s thoughts, views and approach to plants and nature, which he also applied to larger outdoor areas, public parks and urban developments (town of Wulfen). Roland Weber was an artistic personality, creative and with clear ideas of “what should and should not be” (Klaus Klein). He believed that his design was right.

For him, there were no alternative plans, only the optimum. Roland Weber described anything that deviated from this as an error. After a minor difference of opinion, he replied to a client: “But madam, surely you want your garden to look as if God had made it.”

Inspired by the landscape of the Lower Rhine, he found the “greatest possible simplicity” for his gardens. These were characterized by light and shade as well as the subtle colourfulness of various shades of green and grey of meadows and trees. He set accents with the color of white-flowering shrubs or white tulips. He often pushed paths and squares to the edge of his designs in order to allow the eye to glide freely from the interior across the undisturbed lawn into the depths of the garden. He liked to model the terrain towards the end of the plot and lower it towards the house in order to increase the spatial size like a landscape garden – just like his great role model Capability Brown.

He preferred greenery and plants to unnecessary instrumentalization of the open spaces and avoided any superfluous contemporary features such as Corten steel or gravel. Roland Weber designed some gardens exclusively by cutting, removing, eliminating and organizing nature. It was always important to him to bring the sky into the garden. He achieved this by keeping the center low on the horizon and staggering the trees on the sides. Sky, trees and surface should form a triad.

A lecture like Roland Weber’s garden art

“Beauty is my world” was Roland Weber’s leitmotif, as was “I was never fashionable”. In addition to tranquillity and calm, “his gardens are characterized by balanced proportions and great harmony” (Klaus Klein). I get by with just a few plants” also testifies to his consistent attitude towards simplicity and timelessness. He found too much color in the garden “unattractive”. In his own garden, Weber philosophized about the opening blossom in summer, the leaves falling on the lawn in autumn or the stillness of the snow cover in winter.

Klaus Klein’s lecture thus had the effect of Roland Weber’s garden art. Klein now runs Roland Weber’s office with his partners Rolf Maas and Sebastian Riesop. The two home gardens planned by WKM Landschaftsarchitekten without Weber and shown in the lecture also reveal the stylistic elements of Weber’s design.

“The nuances of green … Fantastic!”

There was much to learn from Roland Weber and Klaus Klein as the evening’s speakers for their own work – the art of gardening, aesthetic discipline, beauty and simplicity. Some of the suggestions could also be applied to today’s urban planning and well-known qualities could be integrated into open space planning.

“White and green” – said the great landscape architect of the 20th century, who would have been 110 years old last year – “is the ultimate for me, but green alone is also simply enchanting. The different shades of green… Fantastic!”