About Garten + Landschaft

Garten + Landschaft

Garten + Landschaft is the German-language specialist magazine for landscape architecture and urban planning, published monthly in Munich by the GEORG GmbH & Co. KG (formerly Callwey Verlag). Emerging in 1948 from the journal Die Gartenkunst – founded in 1890 as the monthly of the Verein der Gartenkünstler – it is the longest-standing periodical in the field of landscape architecture and urban planning, a publishing tradition spanning well over 130 years. Published by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gartenkunst und Landschaftskultur (DGGL), the magazine reports on developments in landscape architecture and urban development, documents internationally relevant projects and stimulates discussion about the future of landscape and urban space, with interviews, essays and commentaries complementing the project documentation.

Overview

Garten + Landschaft appears monthly, with the ISSN 0016-4720 in print. The magazine's editorial program addresses the professionals who shape landscapes and cities: landscape architects in private practice and public service, urban planners, garden designers, municipal green-space administrators, the academics and students of the planning disciplines and the decision-makers who commission landscape projects.

The content combines project documentation with professional discourse: reports on developments in landscape architecture and urban development, documentation of internationally relevant projects – from garden design to environmental planning, from the private villa garden to the public park, from the urban square to the regional landscape – and the interviews, essays and commentaries that stimulate discussion about the future of landscape and urban space. The magazine positions itself not merely as a reporter of the discipline but as a participant in its debate – the forum where landscape architecture discusses its direction, its responsibilities and its responses to the century's challenges, from climate adaptation to biodiversity, from densification to the transformation of urban open space.

The publisher is the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gartenkunst und Landschaftskultur (DGGL) – the German Society for Garden Art and Landscape Culture, the professional association whose own history is intertwined with the magazine's: the society's first publication in 1890 was the "Zeitschrift für bildende Gartenkunst," a monthly journal of the garden artists' association, renamed Die Gartenkunst in 1899 and Garten + Landschaft in 1948. The DGGL also publishes an annual yearbook and – in its seventh edition in 2011 – the DGGL travel guide to more than 1,500 private and public parks in Germany, the standard reference for garden travelers. For its 125th anniversary in 2012, the society founded the DGGL Academy at Biebrich Palace in Wiesbaden – the education center for garden culture, green and open-space planning and horticulture, set in the park that was Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell's last work.

History

The magazine's lineage begins in 1890 with the "Zeitschrift für bildende Gartenkunst," the monthly journal of the Verein der Gartenkünstler – the association of garden artists who professionalized garden design in the German Empire. Renamed Die Gartenkunst in 1899, the journal appeared successively in Berlin (at the Gebrüder Borntraeger publishing house, 1899–1907), in Würzburg (at Stürtz, 1908–1914) and thereafter in changing publishers, documenting the garden art of the Empire's final decades, the Weimar Republic's modernism, the Nazi era and the Second World War. Its last issue under the Die Gartenkunst title appeared in 1944, in the war's final year.

In 1948 the journal was reborn as Garten + Landschaft – the new title for the new era: the garden plus the landscape, the designed garden plus the planned environment, the aesthetic plus the ecological, the private plus the public. Until 1949 the Munich garden architect Alfred Reich served as the journal's editor (Schriftleiter), guiding the transition from the war-interrupted tradition to the Federal Republic's new beginning.

In 1956 the publisher Georg D.W. Callwey in Munich took over the journal's publication – the beginning of the Callwey era that continues today under the GEORG GmbH & Co. KG name – and the magazine has appeared monthly ever since, the monthly rhythm that has structured the discipline's professional communication for nearly seventy years.

Through the post-war decades, Garten + Landschaft documented the landscape architecture of the Federal Republic: the reconstruction era's green planning and the new cities' open spaces, the 1960s and 1970s' large-scale landscape projects and autobahn plantings, the ecological turn of the 1980s that brought nature conservation into planning, the reunification's planning challenges in the new federal states, the 1990s' and 2000s' urban-regeneration landscapes and the contemporary era's agendas – climate adaptation, biodiversity, sponge cities, the transformation of urban open space and the renaturation of post-industrial landscapes. As the longest-standing journal in its field, its archive is the discipline's collective memory, the record of how German-speaking landscape architecture thought, designed and argued across three centuries.

In January 2021 the trained urban planner Theresa Ramisch became the new editor-in-chief – the leadership renewal that brought the planning profession's contemporary perspectives – on densification, mobility transition, climate justice and the social dimensions of open space – to the historic title.

Content and Sections

The editorial program of Garten + Landschaft follows the discipline's agenda. Project documentation forms the core: the reports on landscape-architecture and urban-development projects – from garden design to environmental planning, from private gardens to public parks, from urban squares and waterfronts to regional landscapes and renatured industrial sites – with the international scope that documents relevant projects worldwide, the visual and analytical presentations that let the profession learn from built work.

Development reporting covers the discipline's evolution: the new approaches and methods, the research findings from the universities, the policy changes – from building law to nature-conservation regulation – and the professional debates that move landscape architecture and urban planning, from the education of the next generation to the fees and working conditions of the practitioners.

The discourse formats – interviews with leading practitioners, researchers and thinkers; essays that develop positions on the discipline's contested questions; commentaries that take stands on current developments – stimulate the discussion about the future of landscape and urban space that the magazine sets as its explicit goal. The magazine is the discipline's debating chamber as much as its picture book.

Publisher and Organization

Garten + Landschaft is published by the GEORG GmbH & Co. KG in Munich (formerly Callwey Verlag) – the publishing house that has published the journal since Georg D.W. Callwey took it over in 1956. The publisher (Herausgeberin) is the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gartenkunst und Landschaftskultur (DGGL) – the professional society whose journal it has been since 1890. The editor-in-chief is Theresa Ramisch, the trained urban planner who took office in January 2021, bringing contemporary planning perspectives to the historic title. The magazine appears monthly and carries the ISSN 0016-4720 in print.

Digital Presence

The digital home of Garten + Landschaft is garten-landschaft.de, the portal that extends the monthly magazine into the digital channels. The site provides access to the magazine's contents, subscription information and the DGGL's offerings – from the yearbook to the park travel guide to the Academy's programs – serving the landscape-architecture profession's information needs between monthly issues.

With its 1948 founding – and its 1890 roots in the garden artists' journal – its monthly rhythm since 1956, its position as the longest-standing journal of landscape architecture and urban planning and its DGGL publishing base, Garten + Landschaft remains the central medium of the German-speaking landscape disciplines – from the Zeitschrift für bildende Gartenkunst to the contemporary magazine, from the garden to the landscape and the city, from the monthly issue to the digital portal.