HEAVENLY GROVES
KLOSTER GARDEN
In the rose bed, mystery glows.
The secret is hidden in the rose.
The secret is hidden in the rose.
In the rose bed, mystery glows.
The secret is hidden in the rose.
— Farid ad-Din Attar
1. A GARDEN WITH A ROMAN SOUL
Early monasteries, of which our Benedictine Nunnery of St. Bonifatius in Zscheiplitz is an example, followed a ground plan derived from the Roman villa. At its heart lay the colonnaded courtyard, which became the cloister garden.
These gardens were set within strict rectangular bounds, often centered on a fountain. They were not decorative. They were instruments for contemplation — architecture for slowing the eye and ordering the mind. A place to remember.
It is this same question of remembrance that stands at the center of Hamlet — Shakespeare's great play of memory, conscience and a garden gone to weed: "Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely." The neglected garden as a mirror of a neglected state. The monastery garden offers the opposite answer: a garden tended, remembered, and restored.
2. THREE GARDENS IN ONE
A medieval monastery held not one but three gardens, each with its own knowledge:
The hortus — the kitchen garden for vegetables, seasonings and sustenance. Food, seasonality and hospitality.
The herbularius — the herb garden for medicinal plants. Knowledge of healing, fragrance and the body, passed from hand to hand.
The paradise garden — before the west doors of the great churches, producing flowers to adorn the church and offering sanctuary to those seeking refuge. Beauty as hospitality.
Together they formed what we at NaturGarten e.V. would today call a living cultural archive: a place where landscape, food, medicine, craft, design and ways of living intertwine.
The secret is hidden in the rose.
— Farid ad-Din Attar
1. A GARDEN WITH A ROMAN SOUL
Early monasteries, of which our Benedictine Nunnery of St. Bonifatius in Zscheiplitz is an example, followed a ground plan derived from the Roman villa. At its heart lay the colonnaded courtyard, which became the cloister garden.
These gardens were set within strict rectangular bounds, often centered on a fountain. They were not decorative. They were instruments for contemplation — architecture for slowing the eye and ordering the mind. A place to remember.
It is this same question of remembrance that stands at the center of Hamlet — Shakespeare's great play of memory, conscience and a garden gone to weed: "Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely." The neglected garden as a mirror of a neglected state. The monastery garden offers the opposite answer: a garden tended, remembered, and restored.
2. THREE GARDENS IN ONE
A medieval monastery held not one but three gardens, each with its own knowledge:
The hortus — the kitchen garden for vegetables, seasonings and sustenance. Food, seasonality and hospitality.
The herbularius — the herb garden for medicinal plants. Knowledge of healing, fragrance and the body, passed from hand to hand.
The paradise garden — before the west doors of the great churches, producing flowers to adorn the church and offering sanctuary to those seeking refuge. Beauty as hospitality.
Together they formed what we at NaturGarten e.V. would today call a living cultural archive: a place where landscape, food, medicine, craft, design and ways of living intertwine.
3. LOSS AND RETURN
Though remodeled in the 18th and 19th centuries, the final blow to the Zscheiplitz monastery garden came in the 1950s and 60s, when the house and grounds fell into complete disrepair.
Over the last years we have invested considerable time and care into recreating what was once one of the most sophisticated gardens in the Saale-Unstrut valley — the garden of the St. Bonifatius Nunnery.
After careful restoration, a new plan was implemented with a clear emphasis: the rose. Traditional monastic plant, native botanical treasure, pollinator haven, and carrier of deep symbolic meaning.
For the new NaturGarten e.V. Regional Group Saxony-Anhalt, founded here at Zscheiplitz, this is the central connection: we understand the monastery garden not as nostalgia, but as a model for the future. Native wild roses (Rosa canina, Rosa gallica, Rosa rubiginosa), companion herbs, structurally diverse habitats, old kitchen cultivars and fragrant plants create what NaturGarten calls Lebensräume der Zukunft — habitats of the future where people and nature can flourish together, beautiful, climate-resilient and species-rich.
Though remodeled in the 18th and 19th centuries, the final blow to the Zscheiplitz monastery garden came in the 1950s and 60s, when the house and grounds fell into complete disrepair.
Over the last years we have invested considerable time and care into recreating what was once one of the most sophisticated gardens in the Saale-Unstrut valley — the garden of the St. Bonifatius Nunnery.
After careful restoration, a new plan was implemented with a clear emphasis: the rose. Traditional monastic plant, native botanical treasure, pollinator haven, and carrier of deep symbolic meaning.
For the new NaturGarten e.V. Regional Group Saxony-Anhalt, founded here at Zscheiplitz, this is the central connection: we understand the monastery garden not as nostalgia, but as a model for the future. Native wild roses (Rosa canina, Rosa gallica, Rosa rubiginosa), companion herbs, structurally diverse habitats, old kitchen cultivars and fragrant plants create what NaturGarten calls Lebensräume der Zukunft — habitats of the future where people and nature can flourish together, beautiful, climate-resilient and species-rich.
The paths of the old monastery garden
4. WHY THE ROSE?
The rose is sacred across cultures, and that is why it belongs in a monastery garden.
The Greeks and Romans linked it to Aphrodite and Venus, goddess of love. In the late classical novel The Golden Ass, the goddess Isis appears as "the sweet Rose of reason and virtue" that saves the hero from his bewitched life as a donkey.
In Rome, a wild rose was placed on the door of a room where confidential matters were discussed. Hence our phrase sub rosa — "under the rose" — to keep a secret.
Christians used the red rose as a symbol of Christ's passion, martyrdom and resurrection, and the white rose for Mary's motherhood and purity.
In Islamic tradition, the rose symbolizes the Prophet Muhammad. The great Sufi mystics wrote: "His great personality illuminated the roses color, and his perfect morality is the source of its fragrant sense."
The rose is sacred across cultures, and that is why it belongs in a monastery garden.
The Greeks and Romans linked it to Aphrodite and Venus, goddess of love. In the late classical novel The Golden Ass, the goddess Isis appears as "the sweet Rose of reason and virtue" that saves the hero from his bewitched life as a donkey.
In Rome, a wild rose was placed on the door of a room where confidential matters were discussed. Hence our phrase sub rosa — "under the rose" — to keep a secret.
Christians used the red rose as a symbol of Christ's passion, martyrdom and resurrection, and the white rose for Mary's motherhood and purity.
In Islamic tradition, the rose symbolizes the Prophet Muhammad. The great Sufi mystics wrote: "His great personality illuminated the roses color, and his perfect morality is the source of its fragrant sense."
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5. THE ROSE SPEAKS
This shared language of the rose is preserved in poetry — poetry that was meant to be read in gardens:
Farid ad-Din Attar (d. 1230) in The Rose Garden:
In the rose bed, mystery glows.
The secret is hidden in the rose.
Rumi:
That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.
And when the rose is gone:
When the rose is gone and the garden faded
you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.
The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil.
The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.
If love withholds its strengthening care,
the lover is left like a bird without wings.
How will I be awake and aware
if the light of the Beloved is absent?
Shakespeare gives this language of flowers to Ophelia — rosemary for remembrance, pansies for thoughts, fennel, columbine and rue. In Zscheiplitz, we plant them again, not as stage props, but as living memory. This is what Hamlet and the monastery garden share: the knowledge that without remembrance, without tending, culture and nature both become unweeded gardens.
This shared language of the rose is preserved in poetry — poetry that was meant to be read in gardens:
Farid ad-Din Attar (d. 1230) in The Rose Garden:
In the rose bed, mystery glows.
The secret is hidden in the rose.
Rumi:
That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.
And when the rose is gone:
When the rose is gone and the garden faded
you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.
The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil.
The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.
If love withholds its strengthening care,
the lover is left like a bird without wings.
How will I be awake and aware
if the light of the Beloved is absent?
Shakespeare gives this language of flowers to Ophelia — rosemary for remembrance, pansies for thoughts, fennel, columbine and rue. In Zscheiplitz, we plant them again, not as stage props, but as living memory. This is what Hamlet and the monastery garden share: the knowledge that without remembrance, without tending, culture and nature both become unweeded gardens.
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6. A LIVING ARCHIVE
The Zscheiplitz Monastery Garden today is therefore three things at once:
1. A historic place: A High Medieval foundation that shows how centuries-old cultural heritage can be made accessible through gardening.
2. An ecological habitat: In cooperation with NaturGarten e.V., a species-rich, near-natural garden with native plants, pollinators, and climate-adapted structures — a model for private gardens, balconies, and village greens in Saxony-Anhalt.
3. A place of experience: A garden for mindful perception, restoration, readings, garden concerts, herbal walks and conversations — where nature, memory and future meet.
Gardens preserve knowledge of landscape and food, of medicinal plants and the seasons, of craft, design and hospitality. They are not merely decorative backdrops. They are where history, ecology and everyday life intertwine.
We invite you to walk the paths of the old monastery garden and to listen to what is hidden sub rosa.
NaturGarten e.V. Regional Group Saxony-Anhalt is based at Kloster Zscheiplitz and develops events, educational formats and collaborations around near-natural gardening, historic garden culture, kitchen gardens, herbalism and art in nature. Contact: Alexander von Hahn, von.hahn@me.com