Palace Garden in Nieborów

The residence in Nieborów has a Baroque spatial composition, developed in the 18th century. The final character of the establishment was shaped in the 19th century and during the revalorisation works carried out after World War II.

The Baroque palace

It is an axial residential complex, the central element of which is a Baroque palace with the main entrance in the northern elevation and an exit to the garden on the southern side. The palace was built in the years 1690-96 according to the design of Tylman of Gameren for Primate Michał Stefan Radziejowski, on the site of the former Nieborowski manor. It is a brick, two-storey building with a mansard tile roof. The alcove towers located on both sides of the main body are decorated with sheet metal cupolas with dormers, topped with spires. In front of the entrance to the palace there is a raised driveway, framed on the sides by walls finished with stone statues of lions from the early 18th century.

The interiors and the body of the palace have been the subject of many reconstructions and additions, carried out by successive owners of the estate. Nevertheless, its main features have been preserved and its general profile remains an example of assimilation of north-western European Baroque architecture on Polish soil, which is expressed by the combination of the light body of the building maintained in the spirit of classicising Palladianism with alcove towers typical of the Polish Renaissance and Baroque.

The Nieborowski Field

The cour d'honneur and the avant-cour are flanked by the majolica factory and the former palace outbuildings on the one side and more outbuildings on the other. A magnificent entrance gate with a guardroom leads to the premises. Along the main compositional axis there is a garden. The regular garden directly adjoining the palace from its southern side passes freely into the open landscape – cultivated fields with meadows called the Nieborowski Field ending with a wall of forest. An informal (landscape) area adjoins its western border, while the section located on the eastern side is occupied by potager gardens and orchards.

The French garden

Within the oldest part of the garden is a notable potager garden, transformed in the second half of the 19th century into the so-called French garden. The regular garden consists of two sections connected by compositional axes – the older internal garden dating from the end of the 17th century, probably designed by Tylman of Gameren, and the external garden surrounding it on three sides, dating from the second half of the 18th century and designed by Szymon Bogumił Zug.

The core and main compositional axis of the layout is a single green avenue (with turf in the middle) leading from the palace towards the south, ending with an aha, behind which there are fields and a forest wall. Immediately adjacent to the palace are ornamental parterres which, as one moves away from the palace, pass into bosquets decorated with secret gardens, flanked by berceaux with circular arbours at the corners, and into open bosquets. The former game preserve located in the western part of the complex was transformed in the 18th century into an informal (landscape) garden with an extensive water system. The regular section and the landscape section are separated by an "L" shaped channel.

The flora of the Nieborów 

The flora of the Nieborów garden remains extremely rich. Among more than 5,000 tree specimens there are 81 species with a dominant share of native trees such as linden, hornbeam, oak, pine, ash, birch, alder and willow. Over 145 trees are more than 120 years old. The tree stand includes a magnificent, age-old linden avenue, and two plane trees growing next to the palace, probably planted by Michał Kazimierz Ogiński in 1770, stand out from the solitary trees. The hornbeam and linden rows are also extremely valuable, especially within the oldest part of the regular garden.

The palace section is decorated with symmetrically shaped compartiment parterres, which are patterned in part by boxwood plantings and in part by annuals and lawn, additionally decorated with houseplants. The orangery collection – orange trees, laurel trees and other orangery plants – is presented in the historic orangery building. During the summer, some plants are placed in the gardens. In the eastern part of the regular garden is an amphitheatre, the backdrop of which, in the form of secret gardens surrounded by rows of hornbeams, is also the entrance to the French Garden.

This garden displays ancient methods of growing plants, especially various forms of fruit trees, forgotten vegetable species, herbs, and vines. In the area of the palace-garden complex, apart from the palace, the following historical buildings have been preserved: the palace outbuilding, the majolica manufactory, official houses, orangeries, the gardener's house with an icehouse, stables and coach house, and a granary on the grange.

Garden architecture and furnishings

Among the buildings of the Nieborów complex, two orangeries are closely related to the shape of the garden surrounding the palace. The Old Orangery was built before 1790 to a design by Sz. B. Zug. In December 1981 there was a fire, after which the Old Orangery was partially rebuilt. It is a classical, two-part building, containing a greenhouse and a nursery, erected on the plan of an elongated rectangle, covered with shingles. The body is decorated from the south by a Tuscan colonnade filled with large windows and a wooden frieze and architrave of massive wooden beams. The orangery currently houses a collection of native and exotic orangery plants. The Old Orangery was built around 1795 to a design by Sz. B. Zug.

The building is probably a preserved fragment of the large orangery built specifically to house the collection of 300 citrus trees purchased by M. H. Radziwiłł in Dresden. When the greater part of the collection was sold in 1868, the building was demolished, retaining only the easternmost portion, which was converted into a storehouse, the so-called Lamus. In 1948-51 the building underwent reconstruction works under the direction of Professor G. Ciołek. The brick classicist building, erected on a rectangular plan, is covered with a hipped roof with shingles.

The garden contains many decorative elements, among which stand out stone sculptures, vases, antique sarcophagi and tombstones, "stone babas" from the 9th-10th centuries, and many fragments of various architectural objects, mostly Roman, transferred from Arkadia to Nieborów in the mid-19th century.