Planting patterns and exotic plants in nineteenth-century Bucharest public gardens

The first two public gardens in Bucharest, as well as some of the oldest in the South and East regions of nowadays country of Romania, were designed, built and planted around the mid-nineteenth century by a German-born landscape gardener named Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer. These two public gardens were designed according to modern nineteenth century landscaping concepts and were planted with exotic species of flowers, shrubs and trees not common at that time either in Bucharest or anywhere in the Romanian provinces south or east of the Carpathians. To better understand the design, development, and meaning of these gardens, this paper aims to analyze the specific palette of ornamental species of plants and the planting patterns that were used for the Kiseleff and Cișmigiu gardens in Bucharest and to outline the importance of their use.