II. - Schloss Schwetzingen

served his apprenticeship with Court Gardener
Johann Kern at Ansbach and became
familiar with the English landscape style,
when he helped with the restoration of the
garden of Triesdorf Castle. He continued his
training at the palaces of Ludwigsburg and
Solitude near Stuttgart.
In order to avoid Württemberg’s compulsory
military service, Zeyher then went to Karlsruhe
where he could also add to his knowledge
of landscape gardening. From 1792, he
worked for the botanical gardens of Basel University;
in 1801, Margrave Carl Friedrich von
Baden (1728-1811) made him court gardener
and entrusted the garden of the margravial
palace near Basel to his care.
In 1804, Zeyher was called to Schwetzingen
to succeed Friedrich Ludwig Sckell (1750-
1823). In 1806, he was appointed director of
gardening and took over the management of
gardens all over Baden. Besides maintaining
the palace gardens and effecting minor
alterations, like those of the great pond and
the arboretum, he supported nurseries and the
planting of trees to line the country roads of
Baden. His creative skills became evident in
the redesigning of the grounds of Heidelberg
Castle and of the palace square in Karlsruhe,
as well as in the new gardens created to
surround the pump room in the spa of Baden-
Baden and the Roman baths at Badenweiler.
As a botanist he made a name for himself
with the setting-up of a tree collection for
research purposes at the Schwetzingen arboretum.
His scientifi c work culminated in the
founding of the “Herbarium Zeyheri”, a large
collection of preserved animals and plants
from all over the world, that was destroyed
during WWII.
His love of the Schwetzingen grounds
becomes evident in the Beschreibung der
Gartenanlagen zu Schwetzingen, a guidebook
he published in two editions together with
Georg Christian Roemer. A third, even more
detailed description of the garden entitled
Schwetzingen und seine Garten-Anlagen was
published in collaboration with J. G. Rieger.
IV. Biographies
The inventory of trees and greenhouse plants,
updated and extended regularly from 1806,
serves as an important source of information
about the plants of Schwetzingen to the
present day.
Zeyher’s services to his profession and
country were recognized during his lifetime
with the awarding of the Knight’s Cross of the
“Zähringer Löwenorden” in 1825, the title of
an Archducal Privy Councillor in 1826, and
the freedom of the town of Schwetzingen in
1835. When he died on 23rd April 1843, in
the ambassadorial quarters of Schwetzingen
Palace, the era of the garden directors had
come to an end.
(Hubert Wolfgang Wertz)
Johann Michael Zeyher
(1770-1843)
IV.
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