The landscape garden is based on many real and idealized preconditions which, during the course of a long history of cultural intermediation and development, led to a form of garden and landscape design that developed from the formation of the ‘landscape’ as a ‘visual image’ to a political and aesthetic idealization of Arcadian nature and landscape sceneries. Subsequently, the landscape garden emerged as a symbol of freedom, imagery, and theater, leading finally to the reification of this artificially and aesthetically constructed visual entity into a physical landscape. The focus is on examples of English and German landscape gardens, the development of the ‘Volksgarten’ (ornately landscaped park open to the public), and the beautification of the countryside as well as the decline of the landscape style.