Gartenland NRW

	24 islands of contemporary garden design in a sea of Chinese silvergrass contrast with an English landscape park and a Baroque castle (Schloss Dyck and Dycker Feld)
	A kitchen garden ("Potager"), an orchard ("Qunicunx"), a reflecting pond, a fan avenue, a trumpet-shaped pond ("Trompet"), an orangery, a hunting garden and a Museum for European Garden Art invite the visitor to take a stroll, discover and understand (Schlosspark Benrath)
	A surprise during conversion into a monastery museum results in the rediscovery of a vanished garden which is carefully brought to light and gradually given new life (Kloster Dalheim)
	Give your mind and body a treat, follow in the footsteps of the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, experience a literature festival and modern art in the park - all of these in one of the oldest spa gardens in Germany (Kurpark Bad Driburg)
	A garden of trees and shrubs in the centre of the 436 km2 Emscher Landscape Park, where the visitor can trace and experience history on a bike, see the healing of industrial wounds and the way being cleared to make way for new ideas and innovations (Gehölzgarten Haus Ripshorst)

	Unfamiliar and yet familiar: blast furnaces as observation towers in the park, sinter bunkers as garden rooms and settling basins as reflecting ponds. These are elements of post-industrial garden design which functions as a stimulus at international level (Landschaftspark Duisburg Nord)
	A "Westphalian Versailles" which is open to visitors and yet helps to improve the state finances (Schlosspark Nordkirchen)
	Rose garden, moat, maze, Baroque splendour and an idealised landscape around a moated castle near the Dutch border and a "piece of Switzerland" (Schlosspark Anholt)

These are just a few impressions of the extremely varied garden landscape of North Rhine-Westphalia. "Paths to Garden Design" is an invitation by the European Garden Heritage Network (EGHN) and the public and private garden owners collaborating with it to come and experience this variety.

While the parks and gardens are worth seeing in their own right, the surrounding cultural landscape contributes to the attractiveness of a visit, whether this be the hills of Rhine romanticism and the melancholy of the flat Lower Rhine landscape, the hearts of historical villages and towns or a particularly beautiful factory scheme, a climb to art on a slag heap or a walk along a historical path, a cathedral quarter with more than 500 springs or a rocket station as a centre for art and culture. Along the way the visitor learns more about the regions of North Rhine-Westphalia, their histories and distinctive features and understands in turn why the parks and gardens have developed in the way that they can be seen and enjoyed today.

Experts have already paved the way for the visitor and have made an initial selection in order to focus upon the most characteristic features and most surprising aspects of the regions. Four themes in which the special features of each region are gathered comprised the criteria for selection. With the theme as a linking element, as a kind of green thematic thread, there is of course no need to travel along "Paths to Garden Design" in a particular order. Rather than the path, the aim of "Paths to Garden Design" is to encourage the visitor to discover regions, to stop off at places which deserve attention and which then reward the guest for this with new impressions, moods and leisurely hours.

Even taking into account all their typical regional features and individuality, it is clear that the parks and gardens of North Rhine-Westphalia are deeply rooted in European garden design. They have matured thanks to the exchange of new ideas across eras and borders and are part of the common heritage of garden culture in Europe. Many parks and gardens are eloquent witnesses of these common features and simultaneously bear witness to the individual implementation and adaptation to local conditions and to the preferences of their owners. "Paths to Garden Design" shows this using four European themes and approximately 100 gardens (25 of them in North Rhine-Westphalia) on a journey through the ages, conveying something of the impact of the work of various people on the gardens and the impact of the gardens on the people. The project presents fruitful gardens with their many different functions and products and guides the visitor into contemporary gardens which have stimulated the creation of new garden styles and will thus be witnesses of garden history in the future.

It would hardly have been possible for EGHN in North Rhine-Westphalia to develop "Paths to Garden Design" without numerous surveys and ideas, a great deal of commitment and not least the investment of a large amount of money in the maintenance and restoration, the extension and new design of parks and gardens in recent years. Many measures have been implemented by garden owners using their own means, others have received public financial support. Programmes and projects where public bodies and associations as well as private and institutional garden owners have developed, financed and implemented concepts, where the development or enhancement of parks and gardens has been placed in a broader economic, social, cultural and ecological context regarding the sustainable use of space, have been of particular importance for maintaining the momentum of the project and for a "Renaissance of Garden Design". Of particular note in this regard for North Rhine-Westphalia is above all the REGIONALE, which has been held in different parts of the Land every two years since 2000. Further important projects are EmscherPark, its predecessor at the International Architecture Exhibition (IBA), the Landes- und Bundesgartenschauen (Regional and Federal Garden Exhibitions), the Emscher Landscape Park 2010 and initiatives such as the many "Open Garden Gates", the "Garden Design Route" in the Rhineland and Garten_Landschaft OstWestfalenLippe.