The Court Gardener Heydert

The large home and garden before the Nauen Gate was the residence and professional center of the gardener family Heydert into the 20th century. It had been purchased by the master court gardener Joachim Ludwig Heydert, who came to Potsdam from Holland in 1756. Eight years after moving here, he already found himself in a financial position to buy the large suburban house for 2,500 gold Fredericksthalers. There he built a private tree nursery and commercial garden market, which would further increase his wealth in the coming years.

Heydert’s professional start in Potsdam seems to have been difficult in the beginning, since the Seven Years’ War began just as he arrived. Due to a lack of contracts and income, he had even considered returning to Holland. But towards the end of the war, Heydert received lucrative contracts from the Berlin bankers Veitel Heine Ephraim and Daniel Itzig, which apparently provided him with the means to buy his house. The same year, Heydert received a royal reward of a second home inside the city walls for his first commission for Frederick II. This home at Lindenstrasse 43, several stories high, was a so-called “free house”, which had been released from the burden to billet soldiers. But Heydert did not use it much, and rented out part of it after a few years.

Heydert’s first commission for the king was to set up a garden at Sanssouci of the type that the king had seen in Tulpenburg in Holland. The garden in Tulpenburg, which no longer exists today. stood out for its decorative grotto works on the fountain basin, terrace walls and garden buildings. Heydert had been in charge of the care and maintenance of the grotto work there, which consisted of conchylia (shells, snail shells, and corals), minerals and glass beads and for which he had amassed the expertise. This put him in a position to create his own grotto works. At Sanssouci, he laid out a garden between the new Picture Gallery and the Orange Rondell according to measurements in Dutch feet, which contained a Dutch limewood berceaux (trelliswork arcade), a coral garden and a grotto work terrace wall.

As master court gardener, Heydert remained responsible for the care of his “Dutch Garden” for the rest of his life. The other tasks of this “Dutch gardener” – as he was called in a contemporary (honorific) designation – included the planting and care of the pleasure garden at Potsdam City Palace as well as the royal plantations and avenues in the city. The king preferred Dutch limewood trees for this, which had previously been imported from Holland. Acting upon Heydert’s advice, private tree nurseries were founded so that the plant needs in the royal garden areas could be covered without expensive imports. As a result, some of the court gardeners – including Heydert – sold plants from their own private tree nurseries or gardens to themselves in their function as court gardeners.

Heydert’s private “Blumisterei” (floristry) kept the garden areas delivered with hyacinths, narcissi, ranunculi and large numbers of tulip bulbs for planting in the flower beds. Potsdam’s tulips did not come from Amsterdam, but were mostly from Heydert’s garden nursery. And Heydert’s tree nursery delivered pre-cultivated fruit trees for the royal orchards. He also provided dessert fruit to the court kitchen. This included the fruits of the “Orange tree” as well. Heydert, granted, was not responsible for the orangeries, but he was charged by the king with the purchase of new orange trees. Heydert had distinguished himself with the cultivation of pineapple. Nevertheless, it was not he who would be charged with the new force-growing of pineapple, but his nephew who had immigrated from Holland.

Heydert’s nephew Conrad Pleymert had come to Potsdam at the behest of Heydert’s first wife. The couple who had remained childless after the early death of a daughter, had paid for Pleymert’s schooling, gardening apprenticeship and further educational travels in order to set him up as a successor. At the pineapple orchard near the Green Gate (Grünes Gitter), the nephew moved into a handsome home, which is still called the pineapple house today. Pleymert’s further career was hindered with the death of Frederick II, since the new King Frederick William II had other favorites to consider.

Against the urgent advice of his nephew after the death of his first wife, in 1777 Heydert was married again, this time to his niece Katharina Pleymert who had also been married before and lived in Amsterdam. Her first marriage had ended in divorce, and the marriage to Heydert also threatened to fail due to her “drunkenness and quarrelsomeness”. The marriage held, however, though it also remained childless. Three months after Katharina died, Heydert married yet again a third time. The ceremony with the 27-year-old Maria Dorothee Elisabeth Dames from Wustermark took place in 1787 in Heydert’s home. After seven years of “marital bliss”, in Heydert’s own words, he died in Potsdam in 1794. His third wife bore him two sons when he was over seventy years old: Martin Ludwig (1788) and Johann Friedrich (1791). They were to follow in Heydert’s footsteps.

Joachim Ludwig inherited a large amount of cash in golden Fredericksthalers, silver, jewels, medallions, mathematical instruments, a library and a precious collection of conchylia, the value of which was appraised at 6,000 thalers. The city house at Lindenstrasse 43 was sold in 1822, and the elder son carried on with the garden nursery at Nauen Gate. King Frederick William IV had the suburban house renovated in the Italianate villa style during a beautification of the Nauen suburb in 1854. But the house and the garden nursery at Nauen Gate remained in the possession of the Heydert heirs until 1921. After that, the new owners furnished the estate, known as the “Thiemann House” from that time on, with numerous works of art. Since then, the old greenhouses have disappeared. A flower shop pavilion built at the street in 1901 by Bertha Heydert (née Wickler) and an old apple tree in the garden are still there to remind us of the legacy of the “Dutch gardener” in Potsdam.

– Stefan Gehlen, Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg

Header Image: Facade of the Villa Heydert, Potsdam │ Photo: SPSG, Birgit Morgenroth