The French Capability Brown meets English-style design in this German garden

On a recent trip to Schloss Dyck in Germany’s Rhineland, south-west of Düsseldorf, I had been expecting Thomas Blaikie to be the main protagonist in a story that had piqued my interest. He didn’t disappoint — not in the least — but I was happy to discover that, like all good stories about fairy-tale castles, it helps if there is a princess involved.

The princess in question was one Constance de Salm who, through her second marriage in 1803, became first a countess and then a princess when her husband Count Joseph zu Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck was bumped up a notch by the Prussian king. De Salm, however, as a highly educated Frenchwoman, had many more strings to her bow than a mere title and, by the time of her marriage, was well established in Parisian literary circles as a published poet, essayist, composer, playwright and ardent advocate of women’s rights.

At a time of immense political upheaval in France, she was waging her own intellectual revolution. De Salm must have been quite a catch for Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck, six years her junior, but, as he was an academic in his own right, their union was a good one.

His specialism was botany and, during his long life, he wrote prolifically about plants and horticulture — cacti, in particular, were his thing — all the while developing a spectacular garden at Schloss Dyck. This is where Blaikie, Scottish landscape gardener, comes in, who was commissioned by the Count in 1819 to create a rolling, English parkland garden of winding paths, tantalising vistas, trees and harmonious planting to blend with the surroundings.

An unlikely scenario, if ever there was one, for a German schloss. For this, however, we have de Salm, in part, to thank. The princess, so the story goes, decided that if she was to divide her time between Paris and Germany and if she was to encourage the great and the good of her Paris salons to join her at Schloss Dyck, then she wanted the castle to have interesting garden views.

Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck liked the minutiae of planting and cultivating, she liked gardens with a broader vision, and Blaikie, established in pre-Revolution days as something of a Capability Brown to the French nobility, was almost certainly on her radar. His naturalistic English-garden style, which contrasted sharply with the formal geometric layouts traditionally favoured in France, was all the rage and, being a distinguished botanist, too, Blaikie’s skill set would have been right up Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck’s street.

Blaikie’s garden today, 200 years on, is as good as ever. Of the 2,000 trees in the park, only 30 or so date back to his planting scheme, but subsequent generations of Schloss Dyck’s owners have continued to plant and replace. Sweeping vistas of the moated, mustard-yellow castle with its four turrets remain largely unobscured; banks of rhododendrons burst into colour in spring; and, on lazy summer days, visitors to the garden can picnic on the grass or snooze in hammocks slung beneath the trees.

In 1999, Schloss Dyck passed from 900 years of private family ownership to a public, charitable foundation as a ‘centre for garden art and landscape culture’. The family, although non-resident, is still involved.

As part of the castle’s new, publicly accessible incarnation, a nine-bedroom hotel was opened in the former coach house, from which a few fortunate guests may roam the grounds after the gates have closed. Thus, I find myself on a hot midsummer’s evening alone in a deckchair beneath the giant tulip tree — perhaps Blaikie’s most magnificent survivor — imagining Schloss Dyck in the days of Constance and Joseph when this became one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan and cultured addresses. Reassuringly, the spirit of all three lives on.

Visit the Schloss Dyck for more information on how to visit.

The article originally appeared in the August 5, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.