The garden at Andersen’s childhood home
Hans Christian Andersen didn’t have a garden as a child. Where the museum garden begins today, there was once only a wall. Instead, he planted an ever-blooming garden in his literature. Today, many of the plants from his fairy tales have found their way into the garden by Andersen’s childhood home.
The garden was created by landscape architect Charlotte Skibsted and was completed in 2016. It features a selection of both historical varieties and newer, more well-known plant species. Several of the plants were sourced from historic manor gardens around Funen. The garden includes elements of the Romantic garden style, with winding paths, individual garden rooms and a varied, “wild” planting.
The garden is a sensory experience, but you can also scan the QR codes in the garden beds and learn more about selected plants in the garden, and the roles they play in Andersen’s fairy tales.
Oh! what fragrance and what loveliness! every conceivable flower, and for every season of the year, stood here in glorious bloom; no picture book could be more many-coloured and lovely.
“The Snow Queen” (1845)
The largest green leaf in our country is without a doubt that of the butterbur; if held up against one’s tummy, it is just like a big apron, and if placed on the head, it is almost as good as an umbrella in rainy weather since it is so terribly large.
“The Happy Family” (1848)
Butterburs
Butterbur produces white or red flowers in spring. The large, characteristic leaves appear during summer and fall, and it is these leaves that we encounter in some of Andersen’s fairy tales.
In the fairy tale “The Happy Family” we meet a couple of burgundy snails, who live with their son, in a forest of butterbur. The snail couple lives in their own small world. They think that the sun, the rain, the butterbur – yes, the whole world – exist solely for their benefit.
The fairy tale is humorous but also invites reflection on how we view the world. Do we miss something essential if we think everything revolves around us – if we never look beyond our own butterbur forest? Or can there be a kind of peace in living in blissful ignorance about what is happening in the world outside our own?
Read the fairy tale “The Happy Family”.
Curious for more?
The famous fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling” (1844) also begins under a butterbur. The duck mother sits under one of the big butterbur leaves, incubating her eggs. One of those eggs contains the ugly duckling, who will grow up to become a beautiful swan.
Roses
Hans Christian Andersen’s favorite rose was the moss rose, but he loved the rose in all its many varieties. He often wrote it into his fairy tales. It also holds a prominent place in this garden, which features a selection of different rose varieties. Here it is the 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 joy to those around it. Beneath the bush there lives a self-satisfied snail. It criticizes the roses and everything around it but has no desire to engage with the world. It is content in itself. In the end both the rosebush and the snail die – but new rosebushes grow in their place – and new snails complain, turning their backs on the world and retreat into their shells.
Perhaps the fairy tale reminds us that it is never enough to simply think and criticize – we must also contribute. What do you bring into the world?
Read the fairy tale “The Snail and the Rosebush”.
Curious for more?
Roses also play an important role in the fairy tale “Who was the Happiest?” (1872).
I flowered out of sheer joy, because I couldn’t do anything else. The sun was so warm, the air so refreshing, I drank the clear dew, and the strong rain; I breathed, I was alive!
”The Snail and the Rosebush” (1862)
One morning it stood there in full bloom with its small, gleaming white petals that cluster like rays round the small yellow sun at its centre.
“The Mayweed” (1838)
Mayweed
The mayweed is a flower that resembles a daisy or chamomile, and it often grows wild in ditches, which is why many consider it a weed.
The fairy tale “The Mayweed” tells of a poor mayweed growing in a ditch outside a fine villa garden. However, the flower feels just as rich as the fine flowers growing on the other side of the fence. This is because it is kept company by the warm sun and a lark singing beautifully.
One day, the lark is captured by some children and put in a cage alongside the mayweed. Both are soon forgotten, and the lark dies of thirst. When the children find the dead lark, they cry and give it a beautiful funeral. But the lark is dead, and the mayweed, which suffered alongside the lark, is thrown away.
This fairy perhaps serves as a reminder of how thoughtlessly humans can treat nature. Everything in nature has value and should be respected – even a poor mayweed.
Read the fairy tale “The Mayweed”.
Artichoke
The artichoke is a vegetable that blooms with a large blue flower. During Hans Christian Andersen’s lifetime it was a rare plant, typically grown on manors.
In the fairy tale “The Gardener and the Noble Family” a gardener works faithfully to grow the finest produce. However, the noble family always doubts that something so exquisite could come from him or their own garden.
When the gardener brings them a beautiful blue flower one day, they assume it is rare and exotic, and gift it to a princess. They feel humiliated when they discover that it is just a simple plant from the kitchen garden: an artichoke. However, the princess praises the gardener for his eye for beauty. She asks the royal gardener to bring her a flower every day for as long as the artichoke blooms.
Beauty can arise from the ordinary if given time and attention. Even a simple herb kitchen plant can contain great beauty.
Read the fairy tale “The Gardener and the Noble Family”.
Curious for more?
The artichoke is also mentioned in “What the Thistle Experienced” (1870).
One day the gardener came with a large crystal-glass bowl in which there lay a water-lily leaf; across it, with its long, slender stem down in the water, a resplendent blue flower had been laid, the size of a sunflower.
“The Gardener and the Noble Family” (1872)
The little kitchen was full of shining plates and metal pans, and by means of a ladder it was possible to go out on the roof, where, in the gutters between it and the neighbor’s house, there stood a great chest filled with soil, my mother’s sole garden, and where she grew her vegetables.
The Story of my Life (1855)
Chives and Parsley
Chives and parsley are among the oldest herbs in Denmark, and they are also mentioned in Hans Christian Andersen’s descriptions from his childhood home here in Munkemøllestræde.
The present-day garden was already a green space in the 19th century, but it did not belong to the small, rented house where the Andersen family lived. The family only had a small herb box, which stood in the gutter between their house and their neighbors’. In the box the mother, Anne-Marie, grew chives and parsley. This herb box inspired Andersen, and it appears in his fairy tale “The Snow Queen”, in which Gerda and Kay are neighbors and share a gutter with herb boxes, containing vegetables and two rose trees:
Outside the windows both their parents had a large wooden box where they grew their vegetables, as well as a small rose-tree – there was one in each box and they grew there so beautifully.
“The Snow Queen” (1845)
Read the fairy tale “The Snow Queen”.
Apple tree
The garden contains several historic apple tree varieties which were collected from some of the castles and manors, where the author was a frequent guest.
The fairy tale “There is a Difference” tells the story of an apple branch, which is plucked and placed in a vase by a young countess. It is praised for its beauty, and feels superior to all other plants. The apple branch believes that, like humans, plants have different social statuses. It looks down on the dandelion, considering it to be the ugliest and most insignificant weed.
But throughout the fairy tale, the apple branch is proven wrong. Children happily play with the dandelions in the fields, an old woman collects it as a medicinal herb, and the young countess paints the dandelion and the apple branch side by side into a painting. The sun doesn’t discriminate either, shining its rays on both the apple branch and the dandelion.
This fairy tale reminds us that beauty and value can be found even in ordinary and often overlooked things, where they might not be noticed at first glance.
Read the fairy tale “There is a Difference”.
Curious for more?
Hans Christian Andersen also wrote about a pear tree: “Good Fortune can Lie in a Stick” (1872)
..the apple branch was the loveliest thing one could possibly see, it was spring itself in its most delightful form.
“There is a Difference” (1855)
.. it was the loveliest elder bush, a whole tree, it poked into the bed and pushed the curtains aside; oh, how it blossomed and had a wonderful scent!
“Elder-Mother” (1845)
Elder tree
The elder tree has long been associated with folklore. It was said to have medicinal properties, and people believed it housed a tree spirit, a kind of dryad known as the ‘Elder-Mother’.
In the fairy tale “Elder-Mother” a sick little boy is given warm elderflower tea in bed. Suddenly, an elder tree grows from the teapot, filling the entire room. Elder-Mother herself is in the tree.
With the Elder-Mother, the boy travels around Denmark, around the world, and even through time itself. He experiences the innocence of childhood, the love of youth, and the peace of old age. Ultimately, he becomes an old man sitting under an elder tree with his loved one, and the story has come full circle – before he wakes up. Was it all just a dream?
‘Elder-Mother’ is about the power of memory and storytelling, and the marvelous worlds that can emerge when imagination meets the familiar and the ordinary.
Read the fairy tale “Elder-Mother”.
Curious for more?
In the fairy tale “Under the Willow Tree” (1853) the elder tree and Elder-Mother is also mentioned.
Willow tree
The willow trees had already been standing by the Odense River in Hans Christian Andersen’s time. Perhaps Andersen had these trees in mind when he wrote the introduction to the fairy tale “The Buckwheat”.
In this fairy tale, a large, old willow tree stands next to a buckwheat field. During a powerful storm all the plants bow down, except the proud buckwheat. This results in the buckwheat being hit by lightning. Once the storm has passed, the buckwheat is black and scorched. The tree mourns the buckwheat and shakes its branches, causing raindrops to fall from the leaves like tears.
The fairy tale is a fable in Andersen’s style. It explains why buckwheat is often hit by lightning and offers a cautionary tale about the consequences of overconfidence and pride – if you believe the house sparrows who tell the story, that is.
Read the fairy tale “The Buckwheat”.
Curious for more?
In the fairy tale “Everything in its Rightful Place!” (1853) the willow tree also plays a part.
“The Buckwheat” (1842).
“The Snowdrop” (1866)
Snowdrops
Snowdrops are among the first flowers of the year. In Hans Christian Andersen’s time, the flower was also known as “sommergæk” (“summer teaser”). The name comes from the flower “teasing” us into believing summer is on its way, even though it is still winter.
In the fairy tale “The Snowdrop” the little flower is mocked by the wind and the cold; why does it bloom in the middle of winter?! Yet the snowdrop steadfastly believes that brighter days are near.
Throughout its life, it brings joy to children, and it is sent off in a traditional Danish “gækkebrev” – a playful, anonymously sent letter around Easter, often including a snowdrop. In the end, the snowdrop symbolizes the young artistic genius who, like the flower, arrives ahead of his time and must struggle hard for acceptance and recognition.
Read the fairy tale “The Snowdrop”.
Curious for more?
In the fairy tale “Under the Willow Tree” (1853), the elder tree and the Elder Mother are also mentioned.
Winter jasmine
In the garden a winter jasmine grows. Unlike common jasmine, which blooms in the spring, winter jasmine produces beautiful yellow flowers in the cold winter months.
“The Rose-Elf” is one of Hans Christian Andersen’s darker fairy tales and tells a violent story of love, grief and revenge. A young woman’s beloved is murdered by her own brother. A little rose-elf witnesses the murder and whispers the truth to the young woman in a dream. She finds her lover’s body and buries his head in a pot with a jasmine branch, plucked from the scene of the murder. She soon dies of sorrow. The jasmine begins to bloom. In each flower a little soul lives. One night, these souls take revenge by killing the brother in his sleep. It is said that he died from the sweet scent of the jasmine.
This fairy tale draws on folk belief about a living, soulful nature that can observe and follow human actions – and sometimes intervene with vengeance when a wrong has been committed.
Read the fairy tale “The Rose-Elf”.
And the jasmine blossoms opened their large white bells, they smelt so wonderfully sweet: they could not weep for the dead girl in any other way.
“The Rose-Elf” (1842)
“It’s a most pretty flower!” the woman said, and kissed its beautiful red and yellow petals, but just as she kissed it, the flower gave a loud crack, and opened out. It was a real tulip, that was plain to see, but right in the middle of the flower, on a green chair, there was a tiny little girl.
“Thumbelina” (1835)
Tulip
The tulip blossoms in spring and is known for its distinctive, elongated flower head, which resembles a small bowl.
Little Thumbelina, from 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, since by a mole, who wants her to live underground with him – far from sunlight, birdsong and flowers.
Ultimately, however, Thumbelina finds happiness. She flies away to warmer countries on the back of a swallow. There, she meets the flower angels who live in the most beautiful white flowers. She marries the prince of the flower angels and receives a pair of wings so that she can fly freely from flower to flower.
Happiness can be found if we dare to hope – and to endure.
Read the fairy tale “Thumbelina”.
Curious for more?
In the fairy tale “Little Ida’s Flowers” (1835) the tulip also plays a part.
The presentation of the garden at H.C. Andersen’s Childhood Home has been made possible with support from the Danish Business Promotion Board as part of the project ‘Cities for Culture’.
