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    The Park in Voderady

The park behind the manor was originally designed in the French style. In 1794, Count František Ziči commissioned the garden architect and agronomist Bernhard Petri to redesign it into the English landscape style. Petri, a 24-year-old native of Zweibrücken in Germany, created a true masterpiece behind the Ziči manor, which became famous throughout Europe at the time. Bernhard Petri wrote an article about the successful transformation of the park, which was published in 1797 in the Leipzig collection Taschenbuch für Garten-Freunde. In honor of this redesign, Count František Ziči had a 12-meter obelisk erected in the park, bearing a Latin inscription: "NATURAM PINXISSE PARUM EST, NISI PICTA VENUSTE RIDEAT, ET LAETOS OSTENDAT SPLENDIDA VULTUS. VETUSTAS AVORUM SEDES SUO RESTITUIT NITORI 1794. C.F.Z." – "It is not enough that nature painted, unless the painting smiles enchantingly and shows a joyful face, for it is beautiful. The ancient seat of the ancestors has been restored to its former splendor in 1794. Count František Ziči."

The park in Voderady was the very first nature-sentimental park in what is now Slovakia. Experts refer to nature-sentimental parks as garden designs from the period when Enlightenment thinking influenced all fields of human activity (the last third of the 18th century). Rigid geometric lines were replaced by free landscaping. In the final third of the 18th century, the most popular type of park in Slovakia was the neoclassical sentimental park. It emerged from a combination of the reduced French garden and the English landscape style. It was in these parks that the first exotic tree species appeared. Although the designers aimed to return to nature, they could not entirely forsake traditional "Baroque" decorations, which is why flowerbeds and representative vistas of French parks were retained around the manor.

A characteristic feature of the sentimental park was the use of free lines, unshaped trees, natural integration of the park into the surrounding nature, and the creation of sentimental moods using various natural and architectural elements that evoked a sense of abandonment, mystery, and history. Unlike French gardens, where such curiosities were intended to provide amusement and evoke cheerfulness, the purpose of such a park was to remind visitors of a romantic past and promote elegiac moods.

The Ziči family in Voderady did not want to fall behind the times, so they, like many other Hungarian nobility, had their manor grounds landscaped. The park with a pond was enhanced with architectural elements such as an artificial grotto decorated with stalactites and fossilized shells, ancient statues, a ruined castle with a simulated prison, a tower, a lodge, a drawbridge, a hermitage, a chapel, an old mill, gravestones, small bridges, and fountains. All of this was hidden among various trees, enhanced by mournful plant species, especially a sad willow, and complemented by the babbling of a stream and a small waterfall near the grotto.

On two small islands in the pond, both deciduous and coniferous trees grew. One of the islands was adorned in a Japanese style with a light viewing pavilion. A bridge in an oriental style led from the shore. Among the fallen crosses stood a hermit's hut, which from the inside resembled the modest dwelling of a hermit, but another door led to a beautifully furnished room with fine furniture, Chinese porcelain, and all the comforts for an aristocratic guest. Not far from there, behind a small stream with a narrow brick bridge, rose the ruins of an old castle. The path to it led over a brick and drawbridge spanning the water moat. The back of the castle was designed as a residence for the park keeper.

The park also incorporated rare tree species, such as Japanese pagoda tree, catalpa, ginkgo – the sacred tree of Buddhists (one of the ginkgos had a trunk circumference of 207 cm, making it the largest of its kind in Slovakia), tulip tree, elm, gymnocladus, white pine, Canadian walnut, plane tree, weeping ash, silver fir, and many others. However, the greatest attention was always drawn to the centuries-old oaks scattered in the forest behind the park. They once provided shelter to hundreds of raven families. The largest of them is the "Jánošík Oak," with a trunk circumference of 527 cm at chest height.

The park was once admired not only by visitors but also by experts. It was the most famous and most admired park in the entire Bratislava region. Thanks to it, Voderady even appeared in contemporary guidebooks and encyclopedias.

Andrej Kubina stated that the ancient Romans had their Tusculum, the Viennese sought solace in Hietzing, and the people of Trnava had their Voderady.

At the height of its fame, dozens of carriages and carts arrived in Voderady on Easter and Pentecost Mondays. On April 6, 1874, almost fifty of them were counted. "The grand garden was bustling with cheerful visitors, who were strolling in large and small groups, some resting on the meadow, expressing their goodwill with loud conversations and laughter. The greenhouses, however, resembled a beehive on a beautiful spring day; those entering and exiting could hardly avoid each other."

Historian Ovidius Faust allegedly knew the Countess and personally visited the manor and park before World War II. In his later writings, he mentioned an old legend about the Templars in Voderady, which was passed down here. After 1945, a period of decline and gradual destruction of the precious park began. Many of the scenic elements completely disappeared. Some architectural features were deliberately demolished, while many were destroyed or taken apart for building materials. The responsibility for the devastation of the architecturally and biologically significant Voderady park lies primarily with the administration of the Voderady school, which managed the manor and the adjacent park during the socialist era.

Between 2006 and 2014, the municipal leadership had the neglected park cleaned several times with the goal of removing invasive tree species. However, these interventions also resulted in the removal of some original, healthy trees. A limited attempt to remedy this was made by planting a few new trees later on.

During the tenure of the then municipal leadership, a part of the park, which included the ruins of a 19th-century castle – a park ruin – was sold into private ownership. After construction work was carried out by the new owner, the park ruin lost its original beauty and the unique atmosphere of mystery.

After the park was sold into private ownership, further interventions were carried out, including the removal of certain trees that, from an ecological and landscape perspective, did not pose an obstacle to the future use of the space and did not require elimination. The authentic scenery was also lost, with the establishment of a temporary depot within the park grounds further degrading its historical character and disrupting its ecological and visual integrity.

The park in Voderady, once considered one of the most significant landscape works of its time and highly valued throughout the Bratislava region, no longer remotely corresponds to the level of its former architectural and aesthetic perfection. Nevertheless, it remains an important testament to the historical development of park architecture in our territory, combining aesthetic, ecological, and cultural-historical values. As a national cultural monument, it reminds us of the era of Enlightenment park design and the significance that the nobility of the time attributed to landscape art, aesthetics, and the harmonious integration of man into nature.

Source: Čambálová, Daniela a kol. Voderady 1243–1993. Voderady: Obecný úrad 1993. Redakcia Voderady Info. Archív Voderady Info. https://www.pamiatky.sk/Content/Data/File/ARCHIV/MR_2017-2.pdf.