The monastery garden
Benedictine monasteries always strived for the greatest possible independence.
The monks' lives were to take place behind the protective walls of the monastery, undisturbed by influences from the outside world. The monastery garden played a major role in this endeavour: by growing medicinal and food plants, it served to provide for the monks' self-sufficiency. At the same time, the garden was also a place of meditation.
Important sources on the history of monastery gardens in the Middle Ages are the "St. Gallen Monastery Plan" from around 820, the landed property ordinance "Capitulare de Villis" of Charlemagne and the garden poem "Hortulus" by Walahfrid Strabo, who, like Einhard, had studied in the monastery in Fulda. They provide information about the structure of the medieval monastery gardens and the plants used there.
At 8000 square meters, the Seligenstadt convent garden takes up almost a third of the total area of the abbey.
The area, which slopes slightly towards the Main to the east of the monastery buildings, has always been the garden land of the Seligenstadt monks, whether as a separate fruit tree and vegetable garden or as a uniformly geometrically laid out parterre for the kitchen garden.
As part of the baroque expansion, the garden was given the design of a parterre divided into eight compartments in the 18th century. Function and decoration continued to be combined. The baroque garden was also a "cabinet of curiosities" in which exotic plants from the "New World" were cultivated and presented. were.
This meant that the Seligenstadt gardeners were finally able to add a few representative highlights to their monastery kitchen garden by planting exotic plants.
Calendar entries by the Seligenstadt monastery gardener from 1763 show that even in this era, the idea of utility was retained alongside the aesthetic aspect.
"The 3 lowest pieces and the 4th in the convent garden planted a quarter with white cabbage, the 4th planted 250 blue cabbage plants, the 4th planted lettuce on the asparagus lands and planted 430 spicy plants"
Since 1983, the convent garden, which was used as a tenants' garden in the meantime, has been reconstructed in its baroque structure and planting.
Today, vegetables, lettuce and herbs are growing again in the convent garden, the former monastery kitchen garden, in eight planting areas bordered with flowers and dwarf fruit trees. Dye plants and espalier fruit are cultivated along the monastery wall.