Goethe’s parental home did not have its own garden, only the fountain courtyard. But from the window looking out to the back there was a wide vista across the neighbours’ gardens and beyond the city limits. Johann Wolfgang liked to sit here, studying and observing the weather. But the Goethe family also owned a garden and a vineyard just outside the city walls, which they enjoyed visiting.

On the second floor was the „garden room,” so called because a few plants had been set before the window in an attempt to make up for the lack of a real garden. As I grew older, that became my favorite refuge, not for indulging in sad thoughts, but for dreaming. Beyond those gardens, beyond the city walls and defenses one could see a lovely fertile plain, the one that extends in the direction of Höchst. In the summer I would do my lessons there, or take shelter from storms, and I could never get my fill of watching the setting sun, toward which those windows were exactly directed. 

Goethe: From My Life. Poetry and Truth, part 1 , book 1