ABSTRACT
Schwetzingen is a small town not far from Heidelberg in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. The Schlossgarten is owned by the state and administered by the Oberfinanzdirektion Karlsruhe. The garden consists of seventy-two hectares of formal garden and landscape park laid out for the Elector Carl Theodor between 1748 and 1785. Like most of the other great German Baroque royal gardens the Schlossgarten at Schwetzingen is now open to the public, but it retains the atmosphere of a garden rather than a public park. This is due in part to its location and boundaries which allow the opening of just two entrances from the town, enabling good supervision and the charging of an entrance fee, and in part to the success of the restoration work already carried out. Visitors number some 500,000 per annum, but as many as 25,000 have been attracted to just one open air concert held in the garden. A management plan devised for the garden in 1970, initiated a programme of restoration under the able supervision of Hubert Wertz. Thirty people, gardeners, garden labourers and mechanics, are employed within the Schlossgarten for its care and maintenance.
