The establishment of the Center for Garden Art and Landscape Architecture dates back to an initiative in the 1990s. In 1996, Prof. Dr. Dieter Hennebo, Prof. Günter Nagel, in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Hubertus Fischer and Prof. Dr. Kaspar Klaffke, organized the conference "The Artificial Paradise: Garden Art in the Interplay of Nature and Society" - supported by the Lower Saxony Foundation. This resulted in a research center for garden art and experimental landscape architecture at the Institute of Landscape Architecture. It was the precursor to today's CGL.
The actual founding took place in 2001 at the conference "Project Herrenhausen – International Workshop for the Conceptualisation of a Centre for Garden Art and Landscape Architecture", supported by the Volkswagen Foundation. During this meeting, the participants developed the concept underlying the CGL. The Departments of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Development, as well as Architecture at Leibniz University Hannover, subsequently applied for an institutional framework for the Center for Garden Art and Landscape Architecture. On June 19, 2002, the Senate of the University decided to establish the CGL as an interdisciplinary institution of Leibniz University Hannover.
Since 2009, it has been one of the Leibniz Research Centers at the University. The CGL was led for 22 years by Prof. Dr. Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, who retired in 2021. In 2023, Prof. Dr. Inken Formann assumed the chair of the Department of History of Landscape Architecture and Garden Conservation at the Institute of Landscape Architecture of Leibniz University Hannover and became the chair of a newly constituted CGL board. With the change of people in charge, the center's focus has shifted.