Biography

German landscape architect and gardener. He was the son of the court and university gardener Peter Joseph Lenné the Elder (1756-1821). As director general of the Royal Prussian palaces and parks in Potsdam and Berlin, his work shaped the development of 19th-century German garden design in the Neoclassical style. His parks were laid-out according to the principles of the English landscape garden.

He began his apprenticeship as a gardener in 1808 with his uncle, Josef Clemens Weyhe, court gardener at the electoral Augustusburg and Falkenlust Palaces, Brühl. From 1809 to 1812, Lenné took many study trips, which took him to Southern Germany, to France, and to Switzerland. In 1811, he completed a long internship in Paris with Gabriel Thouin (1747-1829), who was then one of the most famous garden architects in Europe. This made him a master landscaper. On another of these trips, Lenné made the acquaintance of the creator of the English Garden in Munich, the landscape gardener Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, who would have a lasting influence on Lenné's work.

From Lenné's many designs for landscape parks, the Park Sanssouci in Potsdam, the Park Glienicke in Berlin, and the Tiergarten in Berlin should be mentioned.