Wanting to control nature was a notion that had become old-fashioned by the late 18th century. Instead, it was believed a modern garden should be modelled after nature. Well-known landscape gardeners, such as Georg Steiner and Peter Joseph Lenné, were instrumental in replacing and expanding the geometrically designed Baroque garden with the English-style landscape garden. Wide serpentine paths there led to sensitively composed garden spaces and sentimental park buildings inspired by Romanticism. Many woodland plants, mainly from North America, complemented the older tree population, creating new combinations of colours and forms.
The plant species that are part of the heritage-protected Charlottenburg Palace Gardens are habitats (biotopes) for various endangered plant and animal species. Grazing sheep help to cultivate and preserve invaluable meadow biotopes.
The oldest Swedish rural sheep breed, the “horned Gotland sheep”, still helps mow meadows today. Purchased for the Tierpark Berlin-Friedrichsfelde (zoo) in the 1950s, the undemanding, robust and weather-hardy animals rapidly propagated.
