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Erholungspark Marzahn

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“Garten der vier Ströme”, (garden of the four streams) Erholungspark Marzahn

Berlins most beautiful garden is not – as one could imagine – a castle garden or the botanical garden, no it is the Erholungspark Marzahn. The Erholungspark Marzahn doesn’t provide a spectacular view onto Berlins rivers Spree or Dahme – often reserved only to Berlins “(economic) elite” – but provides instead of a view onto the old eastgerman claddings of Marzahn.


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The garden is relatively new and part of a project which is intended to ameliorate the living conditions of Marzahn-Hellersdorf. In the last elections for the parliament of Berlin the NPD – a party which is extremely right wing managed to gain enough votes to join the city parliament of Marzahn-Hellersdorf. So there is not only need for nature but also for education.

The Erholungspark Marzahn hosts – by now – already 5 little international gardens:

  • The chinese garden – a present of Berlins Partner city Bejing from 2000, called: garden of the regained moon

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(as one can see the chinese garden is a popular background for film crews)

  • the japanese garden called: “garden of the merging waters”

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    The japanese garden by the way was designed by the same Zen monk (I cant find his name right now), who already did the design of the garden of the metropolitan university in Tokyo, located at Minami Osawa.

  • the balinese garden which is in a glasshouse and called: “garden of the three harmonies:”

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    (currently the socalled Fledermauslilie or Teufelsblume (bat-lily or devils flower) is in full bloom)

  • the oriental garden called “garden of the four streams” (see topmost images)
  • and finally the korean garden called “garden of Seoul“, which is a present of the city of Seoul:

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    However the park/garden is not only a museum but hosts -among others- (see images below) :

    • a labyrinth (to be opened next year, below image with the claddings of Marzahn in the background)
    • various playgrounds for young and old,
    • a fairytale garden for children

      • and finally – very important –

    • various foodstands

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    update 27.2.2016:
    Its been about ten years since this entry had been written. Meanwhile Erholungspark Marzahn had turned kind of ugly Disney park like companion piece. I have basically ceased to go there.

    update 19.4.2016:
    It should also be mentioned that the current operator Berlin Grün GmbH is involved in a questionable deal in the context of Schloss Biesdorf (public funding of 500.000 Euro per year by the district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf). Moreover there is unfortunately an unclear connection of Grün GmbH and the destruction of a 120 year old pub building – an important community space.
    In addition allegedly for the International garden exhibition (IGA) the territory of the Erholungspark was enlarged and last year a huge recreational public space (a whole hill) was fenced. There are two protest initiatives against this fencing off of free of entry public space (links: here and here). It is apparently not clear (?) wether this fencing will be taken back after the IGA is over. A main sponsor of IGA is the company Nestle.

    The hill had been used for hiking and skiing and it hosted Marzahns most popular and basically one and only big sledging hill.

    update 28.1.2018:
    I meanwhile had visited the IGA.
    A lot of my “Disney park like companion piece” impression (see above) was probably due to the fact that some of that “Disney park like”-structures (which looked like some knockoff imitations that didn’t really pay much tribute to the originals (like the monastery garden or the english farm house)), were already built with the goal to fill a big area for the IGA.

    Anyways it seems the IGA was above all a financial disaster that is there was apparently 11 million Euros less income than expected and needed for covering the costs. Apparently this money has to be paid now by the city of Berlin. It seems especially the cable car/ropeways was in this context rather destructive.

    posted by nad on Saturday, November 11th, 2006 at 6:35 pm // berlin. // RSS 2.0 feed skip to the end and leave a response // pinging is currently not allowed //

    3 Responses to “Erholungspark Marzahn”

    1. Dzingiz von Knospe Says:
      May 13th, 2011 at 5:13 pm

      They have that great outlet Tama Osawa at Minami Osawa,

      http://www.lalaport.co.jp/english/sc/sc_detail.html?id=op_tama

      or

      http://www.31op.com/english/#tama

    2. cardboard Says:
      February 9th, 2018 at 9:16 am

      “Anyways it seems the IGA was above all a financial disaster that is there was apparently 11 million Euros less income than expected and needed for covering the costs.”

      This is a rather narrow view on things. You should take into account that the economic side effects of such an exhibition can be tremendous. For example
      https://www.ft.com/content/6f57f1c6-cb02-11e3-ba9d-00144feabdc0
      for the famous Alnwick Garden:
      The financial times states that:

      “The project escalated into a £50m scheme, which has become one of northeast England’s biggest visitor attractions. Over 10 years from 2003 it drew about 4m paying visitors and contributed up to £150m to the regional economy. It employs about 330 people full and part-time, plus dozens of volunteers.”

      If you are interested in gardening it is by the way a very worthwhile visit, among the more spectacular settings it hosts a “poison garden”. You may want to read about poisonous plants, like the Datura in this article.

      Unfortunately the garden is threatened to be devaluated due to trashy gift shops and copying. The duchess of Northumberland, who brought life back into the garden is having a hard time. Here it is written that:

      Her anti-standardisation agenda prompts her to recall a run-in with renowned former chairman of Barclays, Marcus Agius. The financier is also a trustee of the Royal Botanical Gardens, and on a visit to the Garden had hoped to get the low-down on how they had executed the Treehouse development.

      “He said, ‘Jane, I want to know about your Treehouse’. It was in a breakfast meeting with the whole shooting party, and alarm bells rang. I immediately said no. I’d given a talk at Kew Gardens and he had his board of directors sitting there taking notes – they copied the walkways ideas from us and now he wanted to copy the treehouse idea.

      “It’s really sad to see a repeat of your idea. You can’t build two Eden projects, what’s the point?

      “We have to do things differently to other places, otherwise what’s the point? I’d never build a little golf course here because that would make us like everywhere else. I only want to include something that already exists in Britain if it can be bettered, and really stands on its own two feet as something amazing.”

    3. Eivor Piepsch nochmal Says:
      July 20th, 2020 at 5:32 pm

      Does Erholungspark have Gäste-Campen?

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