Scientific Papers Series B Horticulture

espective terrains, are now out of the touristicroute of the Bran estate. The surface of the Parkholds the Castle area, the park area to theformer garage workshops and the ethnographicarea in the park. The other areas are notpresented, some of them being the property ofother institutions.The Palace Park is precarious maintained, thelake is clogged, the mature vegetation needsregeneration works and the young vegetation isabusively and wrongly added. The bath housewith the swimming basin, placed beyond theriver are not on the touristic route. The samefor the wooden Church, the Big House, theHospital and the cript where Queen Maria’sheart was placed until 1970.Figure 12. Wrong approach in the context of a naturalstyle park (Dobrescu E., 2009)Figure 11. Thuja Occidentalis in a degraded state(Dobrescu E., 2009)Note that the park had, during the Queen, astrong direction for natural landscape design,the grasslands and the lake shores weredesigned to be natural, free, the meadow wasmowed manually, without o special concern foraccuracy and minute details. The flowers werenatural, wild species and they gave the placethe charm sought by the Queen and thecultivated species were only to be found nearthe castle. Fruit bearing trees only completedthe already present masses of trees resemblingthose found in the nearby forests, thus showingthe pragmatism of the natural style and thedesire to be close to nature.We cannot ignore the fact that, currently, thelandscape is not in accord with it’s originalstyle and does not respect the romanticcharacter created in it’s glory days.Figure 13. Inner courtyard of Bran Castle (Dobrescu E.,2008)The Bran Monument did not reveal anydocumentation regarding the gardensurrounding the castle, not until it entered thepossession of the royal court. The wish ofQueen Maria, to be surrounded by a landscapefitting her passion for nature, gave birth to thedesign which we can analyze today (with a bitof imagination). Let us not forget that then, theyoung sovereign came from a country with astrong landscaping tradition (England), withvery refined tastes and an inclination towardsthe romantic style. All the transformationsmade to the castle and the estate were graftedon the old structure of the domain, under theneeds identified at that time.319