Sckell, Clarus Friedrich Ludwig von (ennobled 1808)

garden architect

born: 13.09.1750 in Weilburg

died: 24.02.1823 in Munich

Sckell completed an apprenticeship as a gardener in Schwetzingen, where his father was court gardener. His journeyman years began in 1773 and took him to Paris via Bruchsal and Zweibrücken. Elector Karl Theodor von der Pfalz (1724-1799) then sent him to England to study the "new style of landscape gardening". Sckell became acquainted with the leading landscape architects of the time, Lancelot Brown (1716-1783) and William Chambers (1723-1796), as well as the famous Kew Gardens in London.

At the beginning of 1777, he returned from England with many ideas and plants and was commissioned to design the peripheral area of the Schwetzingen Palace Gardens in a landscape style. The result was one of the first English gardens in Germany. When the Elector became Bavarian Elector by succession, the focus of government shifted to Munich. In 1789, Sckell began his most famous work there, the English Garden.

In 1799, Elector Maximilian IV. Joseph appointed Sckell Director of Horticulture for the Rhine Palatinate and Bavaria. In 1817, he was commissioned to transform Biebrich Palace Park into an English landscape park.

In 1808, King Maximilian I Joseph awarded him the Order of Civil Merit of the Bavarian Crown, with which personal nobility was associated.