Developed in the second half of the eighteenth century as the earliest landscaped garden in Central Europe, the garden grounds of Wörlitz are the heart of the Dessau-Wörlitz garden realm. When Prince Leopold Friedrich Franz (1740–1817) became regent in Anhalt-Dessau in 1758, he introduced multifaceted reforms, with youthful energy and daring, to advance his country’s economy, wealth, and education. His embrace of new architectural and landscape garden-design principles reflected his enlightened-humanistic sensibility. In a way, the garden grounds of Wörlitz were an antithesis to the stringent and artificial Baroque style that was then customary.
