An experience for the senses
The garden of his childhood became a significant source of inspiration for H.C. Andersen’s fairy tales.
The garden was designed by landscape architect Charlotte Skibsted and completed in 2016. It features a selection of both historic varieties and more recent, familiar plants. Several of the plants have been sourced from historic manor houses across Funen. The garden incorporates elements of the Romantic garden style, with winding paths, distinct garden rooms, and diverse, naturalistic planting.
“What fragrance and beauty there was here! Every imaginable flower, for every season of the year, bloomed in the most splendid profusion. No picture book could be more colourful or beautiful.”
— The Snow Queen (1845)
The garden is a sensory experience, but you can also scan the QR codes placed throughout the flower beds to learn more about selected plants and the roles they play in H.C. Andersen’s fairy tales.
Butterburs
Butterburs are the distinctive leaves that appear in several of H.C. Andersen’s fairy tales.
Butterburs produce white or red flowers in spring. It is only later in the year that their large, distinctive leaves emerge.
In the fairy tale “The Happy Family,” we meet a pair of vineyard snails and their son, who live in a forest of butterburs. The snail family inhabits a world entirely of their own. They believe that the sun, the rain, the butterburs—in fact, the whole world—exist solely for their benefit.
The story is humorous, but it also invites reflection on how we view the world. Do we miss something important if we believe that everything revolves around ourselves and never look beyond our own forest of butterburs? Or might there be a certain peace in living in happy ignorance of the wider world around us?
Roses
H.C. Andersen’s favourite flower was the moss rose, which frequently appears in his fairy tales.
H.C. Andersen loved roses in all their forms, and they have therefore been given a prominent place in the garden, where visitors can experience a variety of different cultivars. The rose featured here is Rosa ‘Paul Scarlet Climber’, a light pink climbing rose.
In the fairy tale “The Snail and the Rosebush,” we encounter a rosebush that blooms season after season, bringing beauty and joy to those around it. Beneath the roses sits a self-satisfied snail. It criticises the roses and everything else around it, yet has no desire to engage with the world. It is entirely content with itself.
In the end, both the rosebush and the snail die. Yet new rosebushes grow and blossom, while new snails continue to complain, turn their backs on the world, and retreat into their shells.
Perhaps the story reminds us that it is never enough merely to think and criticise—we should also contribute something ourselves.
What do you bring into the world?
Mayweed
Mayweed commonly grows wild in ditches, and is therefore often regarded as a weed
In appearance, the mayweed resembles daisies or chamomile flowers. In the fairy tale “The Mayweed,” a small, poor mayweed grows in a ditch outside the finest villa garden. Yet the mayweed feels just as rich as the ornamental flowers on the other side of the fence.
It has the company of the warm sun and a skylark that sings beautifully. One day, a pair of children capture the skylark, place it in a cage, and lay the mayweed beside it. Both are soon forgotten, and the skylark dies of thirst. When the children find the dead bird, they weep and give it a beautiful burial. But the skylark is gone, and the mayweed, which shared its suffering, is thrown away.
The fairy tale may be a reflection on how thoughtlessly humans can treat nature. It reminds us that everything in nature has value and deserves respect—even a humble weed flower.
Artichoke
In H.C. Andersen’s time, the artichoke was a rare plant, typically grown at manor houses.
The artichoke is a vegetable that produces a large blue flower. In the fairy tale “The Gardener and the Noble Family,” a gardener works faithfully to cultivate the finest things. However, his employers constantly doubt that anything so exquisite could come from him or their own garden.
One day, the gardener brings them a beautiful blue flower, which they believe to be a rare and exotic bloom—and they present it to a princess. When they later discover that the flower is nothing more than a simple kitchen-garden plant, an artichoke, they feel humiliated. The princess, however, praises the gardener and his sense of beauty, and asks the castle gardener to bring her a flower every day for as long as the artichoke is in bloom.
Beauty can arise in the everyday, if we give it time and attention. Even a simple kitchen-garden plant can contain great beauty.
Chives and Parsley
The two herbs are mentioned in H.C. Andersen’s descriptions of his childhood home.
Chives and parsley are among the oldest herbs in Denmark, and H.C. Andersen mentions them in his descriptions of his childhood home in Munkemøllestræde. The present-day garden was also a green space in the 19th century, although it did not belong to the small rented dwelling that housed H.C. Andersen’s family.
The family had only a small herb box, placed in the gutter between the Andersens’ home and the neighbouring house. In it, his mother, Anne-Marie, grew chives and parsley. This herb box left a lasting impression on H.C. Andersen and lives on in his fairy tale “The Snow Queen.” Here, the children Gerda and Kai are neighbours and share a gutter with herb boxes in which kitchen herbs grow alongside two rosebushes.
Apple Tree
The garden contains several historic apple varieties collected from special sites.
H.C. Andersen was a frequent guest at several castles and manor houses, where the historic apple varieties in the garden have been collected. The fairy tale “There Is a Difference” tells the story of a branch from an apple tree that is picked and placed in a vase by a young countess. Praised for its beauty, it feels elevated above all other plants.
The apple branch believes that both plants and people are placed on different rungs of the social ladder. It looks down on the dandelion, which it considers the worst kind of weed—ugly and insignificant.
But throughout the story, the apple branch is proven wrong. The children happily play with dandelions in the meadow, an old woman picks it as a medicinal herb, and the young countess paints both the dandelion and the apple branch side by side in a picture. The sun also makes no distinction, casting its rays equally on both.
The tale reminds us that beauty and value can also be found in the ordinary and often overlooked—where it is not immediately seen.
Elder Tree
The elder tree has long been linked to folk tradition, before finding its way into one of H.C. Andersen’s fairy tales.
The elder tree was believed to have medicinal properties, and it was thought to be inhabited by a tree spirit—a kind of dryad—also known as the Elder Mother.
In the fairy tale “The Elder Tree,” a small boy suffering from a cold is put to bed and given warm elderflower tea. Suddenly, an elder tree grows out of the teapot, filling the entire room. Inside the tree sits the Elder Mother herself.
The boy is told both a story and a fairy tale in which superstition, a child’s imagination, and reality merge. With the Elder Mother, he travels through Denmark, around the world, and even through time itself. He experiences childhood play, youthful love, and the calm of old age. In the end, he sits as an old man beneath an elder tree with his beloved, and the story comes full circle—before he wakes.
Was it all just a dream?
Willow Tree
Willow trees already lined the River Odense in H.C. Andersen’s time.
Perhaps it is some of these willow trees that H.C. Andersen had in mind when he wrote the opening of his fairy tale “Buckwheat.” In this story, a large, old willow tree stands beside a field of buckwheat. During a heavy storm, all the plants bend except the proud buckwheat, which refuses to bow. As a result, the buckwheat is struck by lightning. When the storm has passed, it stands blackened and scorched. The tree grieves for the buckwheat and shakes its branches so that the raindrops fall from its leaves like tears.
The tale is a fable in Andersen’s characteristic style. It offers an explanation for why buckwheat is often struck by lightning, and it serves as a warning about what pride and arrogance can lead to—if, that is, one believes the sparrows who tell the story.
Snowdrops
The snowdrop is one of the first flowers to appear each year.
In H.C. Andersen’s time, the snowdrop was also called “summer gæk”—although this name was gradually falling out of use. The name comes from the idea that the flower “gæks” or tricks us into believing that summer is approaching, even though it is still winter.
In the fairy tale “The Summer Snowdrop,” the small flower is mocked by the wind and the cold: why on earth would it sprout in the middle of winter? Yet the snowdrop stubbornly holds on to the belief that brighter times are soon to come.
Throughout its life, it brings joy to children and is sent out in gækkebrev—letters of playful mischief, sent as a joke but often interpreted as declarations of love. In the end, it comes to symbolise the young artistic genius: one who arrives before his time and must struggle for acceptance and recognition.
Winter Jasmine
The garden is home to a winter jasmine.
Winter jasmine grows in the garden. Unlike common jasmine, which blooms in spring, winter jasmine produces bright yellow flowers during the cold winter months.
“The Elf of the Rose” is one of H.C. Andersen’s darker fairy tales—a dramatic story of love, grief, and revenge. A young woman’s beloved is murdered by her own brother. A tiny rose elf witnesses the crime and reveals the truth to the woman in a dream. She finds her lover’s body and buries his head in a flowerpot together with a jasmine branch picked from the place where he was killed.
Soon, the young woman dies of grief. The jasmine begins to bloom, and within each flower lives a tiny flower spirit. One night, these beings take revenge by killing the brother as he sleeps. It is believed that he dies from the sweet fragrance of the jasmine.
The fairy tale draws on folk beliefs in a living, ensouled natural world—one that observes human actions and, at times, intervenes to punish wrongdoing and restore justice.
Tulip
Within the tulip’s bloom lies something extraordinary in H.C. Andersen’s fairy tales.
The tulip blooms in spring and is known for its elongated flower head, which can resemble a small bowl.
Little Thumbelina, the heroine of the fairy tale of the same name, emerges from a tulip. Her life is far from easy. She is abducted and threatened with marriage—first by a toad, and later by a mole who wants her to live underground with him, far from sunshine, birdsong, and flowers.
In the end, however, Thumbelina finds happiness. Riding on the back of a swallow, she travels to warmer lands. There she meets the flower fairies, who dwell within the most beautiful white blossoms. She marries the prince of the flower fairies and receives a pair of wings, allowing her to fly freely from flower to flower.
Happiness can be found if we dare to hope and persevere.