The Garden Festival in Lower Austria

A romantic spa town in style 'Biedermeier', just 26 km from the monumental Vienna makes good the image of the lush region of Lower Austria. This is Baden, a renowned center of ‘green thumb’ that every year for a whole month, from mid May to mid June, keeping the Garden Festival.

Rose Town and historic parks, with over 20 thousand plants in bloom, Baden home to the largest rose garden around the country. Here, the flower symbol par excellence of love, the rose, in all its varieties is carefully cultivated by gardener in the area for over 200 years. During the Spring Festival, the city park Doblhoffpark located in the heart of the city, among other locations, it becomes the perfect setting for many activities, making the setting for exhibitions, gastronomic fairs, concerts and guided tours.

This year, from May 22 to June 20, two other towns trace the history of the Habsburgs between water, light and color. We speak of Bad Vöslau, dedicating the event to the theme of ‘water all around’, and Laxenburg, who instead chose the theme of play and fun. With a surprising capacity of story that stretches from the past to modernity, through parks, historic gardens and baths in the neoclassical style, designed in 1800 by Danish architect Theophil Hansen, Bad Vöslau for 4 weeks represents the primary element of  water, in line with the secular tradition of the wellness place. All activities, in fact, take place at two main sites, the thermal baths and the castle grounds, but the program makes 'tangible' the water in every other corner of the city.

Taking the Habsburg trend to use the summer residence for fun and pleasure, and for rest of course, Laxenburg, however, shows how the history of this country, a history, however, inextricably linked to nature. With its castle, declared a national monument, and the park in the Romanesque style, the Laxenburg, was for centuries, and not coincidentally, one of the favorite royal residences. In particular, Charles was an experienced and enthusiastic gardener, but in general almost everyone in the family were lovers of nature. Today, the Festival activities resume the story, unfolding in its many different places. On the one hand, in more than 200 hectares of Schlosspark, or Garden Palace, and the other in the space of the Schlossplatz, or Palace Square, specially revived for the occasion, with its historic facades and a newly developed park, between the railhead of the Kaiserbahnhof and the former monastery of the Klosterwirtschaft, all with the theme of “the health at the time of the Emperor”.

The Editor