560 mAnsager Lake Park
Short water walk with lakes, bridges and Ansager Å close to Mariehaven’s green setting.
Mariehaven is not a concert hall disguised as a garden. It is a garden used as a music venue, with the audience close to the stage, the host, and each other. The green setting along Ansager Å is part of the experience, not just a backdrop.
Here, especially adult concertgoers gather around live music, community singing, and a style of hosting where storytelling and the Danish song tradition matter just as much as the sound system and the programme. The Main Stage in the garden is the centre of the summer events, while the Music Gallery is also used for concerts.
Helge Engelbrecht is the recurring host and musician at Mariehaven. Neighbours is the regular musical core around him, and as Neighbours & Friends the group expands for larger concerts with more musicians and soloists. The music can move between folk, pop, rock, ballads, dansktop, community singing, and more classical elements.
Mariehaven began as a broader visitor destination, where art, pottery, lectures, storytelling, and music were mixed on a smaller scale. Since then, the musical activity has spread into the town and inspired, among other things, the Marie Festival. It says something about the place that a garden on Søndergade has become one of the names many associate with Ansager as a town of music.
The Queen was Mariehaven’s Christmas exhibition in Ansager in 2022, created by floral artist Johnny Haugaard together with volunteers. For a while, the well-known summer music garden was used outside the concert season as a sensory Christmas universe built from natural materials.
The exhibition could be experienced both in daylight and after dark, when light and atmosphere changed the character of the garden. Behind it all lay several weeks of work, day and evening, by committed volunteers.
“The Angels Tell” was Mariehaven’s outdoor Christmas exhibition in 2023, when the garden of music was for a time used as a glowing winter garden. The route led in through the long corridor, onward out onto the stage and from there to the view over the lawn with three guardian angels.
Floral artist Johnny Haugaard was behind the idea together with The Creative Volunteers and Mariehaven’s volunteers. The expression was based on light, colors, and natural materials, used for small stories about angels and “Marie from the garden”.
