Kwietniki gołuchowskie. Projekty Adama Kubaszewskiego - ogrodnika Jana Działyńskiego i Izabeli Czartoryskiej

The Warsaw-based periodical "Ogrodnik Polski" ("Polish gardener") No. 20, 1882 published a lithograph featuring the main patterned flower bed at Gołuchów. The text that accompanied this lithograph provided an extensive list of plants used in the composition of the flower bed designed by Adam Kubaszewski, the gardener to Jan Działyński and Izabella Czartoryska of Gołuchów. Gołuchów is a place one visits and then, repeatedly, goes back again and again. The castle at Gołuchów, rebuilt from ruins by Izabella Czartoryska between 1872-1885 in French Renaissance style after the design of Zygmunt Gorgolewski, features a vast collection of arts and was made accessible to the general public from the very beginning, being not only a grand residence but also a museum. Beside the new structure of the castle, in the adjacent garden a carpet of flowers was set up on a specially prepared earth terrace. A plan of the garden signed by Adam Kubaszewski and dated "Gołuchów, in March 1884" has been preserved until our times. The garden was viewed from the observation deck, built in the form of a belvedere in place of a round tower in the courtyard. It is just behind the stone balustrade of the octagonal belvedere and from behind the railing of a balcony, that a patterned flower bed stretched wide in front of the eyes of onlookers, now an empty place. Garden and courtyard furniture of the courtyard as well as decorative details were designed by the French architect Maurice Auguste Ouradou. Drawings that document the designing work ofthe architect for Gołuchów from the years 1876-1883 have been preserved to our times and are kept in the Archive of the Voivodship Conservator of Monuments in Poznań. The composition of the flower bed, renown every year, alluded to this historic place and was based on the patterns taken from the treatise on architecture by Sebastiano Serlio. It can be concluded that the decorative friezes by Maurice A. Ouradou, might have set a pattern for the main flower bed in Gołuchów. Adam Kubaszewski notes in his list of plants for the designed flower bed the following species: Al-ternanthera, Coleus (painted nettle), Iresine, Achyranthes; from succulent plants: Echeveria, Sedum, Yucca and Dracaena. In particular this way, he catalogued new cultivated plants that were being introduced to the country, brought to Europe by companies and garden associations to make European gardens more attractive. The standard ruling patterns for flower beds of the latter half of the nineteenth century were based on historical motifs taken from treatises on architecture and included exclusively plants of foreign origin.