Historical Gardens

While the chainsaws roar in large parts of Elswout as a result of an intensive tree assessment session last Autumn, plans are presented for other parts of the garden. The house has been in restoration over the past years. One of the results was that the area in front of the house became part of the building area, where materials were stored, etc.
Google maps currently shows how a large building site hut has occupied the forecourt over the past years.

The forecourt in the circle. Note especially the big group of trees in the southwest section of the forecourt (the lower left part of the circle).

The plan was presented by a special purpose foundation (Stichting Plein Elswout) that is supposed to maintain the forecourt and organize events there and on other location in the large park:

The presentation drawing. All trees at the southwest corner are left out.
Or planned to be cut?

The central part with the oval lawn seems to fit historical developments: this section appears to have been unchanged over the past 200 years. The empty areas between the walls and the water do not seem to be in line with historical developments, nor are they consistent with the current situation. The large trees that are currently there -visible in the lower left part of the circle on the aerial view- are not shown on the presentation of the plan.
One can only hope the trees are left out of the presentation drawing for reasons of clarity, not because there is no place for them in the new layout. A drawing of the house and forecourt dated circa 1810¹ already shows thick planting outside the walls:

Elswout circa 1810. The area outside the walls is planted like a forest.

The total cost of the operation is estimated at € 1.2 million. The organization received funding commitments from the estate’s owners and stakeholders, but is still looking for financial support. They expect to be able to realize their plan within the next two years.

1. Source information: TU Delft [back]

The Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam hosted a big Eugene Atget exhibition, which I visited on the last day it showed here, before it ships to Paris. That is of course the city that inspired Atget to make an enormous amount of photos. He avoided the new Paris, with its grand avenues, and focussed on the Paris he saw disappearing rapidly.
But some things have survived over the course of the 20th century and into ours. Like this plane tree he photographed in Parc Monceau in 1901:

Parc Monceau (8e arr), originally uploaded by George Eastman House.

This photo is not in the exhibition, it is in the collection of the George Eastman House. When I saw this in their photostream on flickr, I immediately knew I had seen this tree earlier this year. I took my photo from the opposite side, where on Atget’s photo the path runs into a group of trees and shrubs. Needless to say the tree is enormous now, after 110 years of additional growth.
Enjoy the combination of then and now, with the link above, and the following photos taken in September 2011:

• Platanus at Monceau - side view

  http://www.historicalgardensblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/P9070288.jpg
  la

• Platanus at Monceau - look at the size of the people

  http://www.historicalgardensblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/P9070289.jpg
  la

It is by no way restricted to Limburg, it happens all over the country: perfectly well developed trees are cut down in forests, avenues and woodland gardens because… the species involved are not ‘local’. In this particular case many specimens of what we call Amerikaanse eik (American Oak, or Quercus rubra), are removed from the slopes of the ‘Wijngaardsberg‘ in Huis Vliek‘s woodland garden.

According to a local newspaper article, the trees are around a century old and cut down because the current view is that in a wooded area like this, only ‘ecologically correct’ trees are wanted. If that is true, stupidity has reached new levels.
And it is partly true, as the local IVN group states in its newsletter of December 2011 that ecological reasons are the main driver of this action. Besides that, they claim safety reasons, as a lot of the older trees apparently are in a bad state – which is to be expected when architectural garden and park elements are treated as ‘nature’ over a period of 4 decades. Architecture needs maintenance, not neglect or a watch-what-happens-when-we-do-nothing approach. This whole action simply seems to be the result of ignorance, nurtured over a prolonged period of time.

Architecture?
The description of the gardens in the register of monuments state that many trees in this monumental garden (nr 470141) date from this period.¹ Part of the axis belonging to the 18th century garden was elongated towards the top of the Wijngaardsberg around 1900, and was then loosely planted with Quercus rubra. The register specifically states that there was no actual avenue planted in this section.

So not only is ‘ethnic cleansing’-to use a rather big word for once- possibly performed under the cover of ‘ecological maintenance’ (definately as a result of such maintenance), it is also quite possible that a deliberate landscape design from a century ago -prolonging an axis that itself was over a century old at the time, using plants that were ‘en vogue’ in the early 20th century- is demolished. A landscape design that may be attributed to Dirk Tersteeg (1907) or, after simplifying the design, to Leonard Springer (1915).²

The worst thing seems to be that the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, the governing body that keeps an eye on these things, has been informed and apparently approved of the plans. I would like to see their motivation published somewhere, just to see what their considerations were.
At least all necessary parties have been asked for an opinion, it should be said…

And just as a pointer for future actions (and because it is a source I did not know of yet): here’s a nice view at monumental trees in the garden of Vliek.

1. The link leads to a somewhat more extensive description on ‘Rijksmonumenten.nl’, which is not related to the official governing body concerning monuments in The Neherlands: RCE. [back]
2. But the Springer design seems to be limited to the garden around the house. [back]

This very weekend Staatsbosbeheer, its owner, will start an emergency felling of trees on the grounds of Elswout and neighbouring Duinvliet. This is the result of an extensive review of the health of many trees on both estates. The survey was initiated by the unexpected collapse of an old tree in August 2011.

The current felling follows extensive restoration works carried out in Elswout over the past year, which mainly concerned its pavilions and bridges.

The work has started today, as the situation appears to be too critical to wait till after the holidays. First up will be trees along a public cycling path, on the grounds of Duinvliet. Staatsbosbeheer expects the investigation of potentially dangerous trees and -when necessary- felling of more trees will last through the first half of 2012.

Counting rings?
I just hope someone makes the effort to count growth rings on the older trees, as parts of nowadays Duinvliet are remnants of one of the oldest landscape gardens in The Netherlands: Sandenhoeff in Overveen. In my article on the subject I make a case for that claim, by pointing out that although we know very little of the actual layout of the garden at the time, the fact that plants from the New World are purchased for it as early as 1756, can only mean an attempt was made to create an English garden in the dunes west of Haarlem.¹

In letters to his friend Jacob Boreel, Sandenhoeff’s owner Cornelis Backer exclaimed that he very much enjoyed the layout of those gardens, although he had admittedly never seen one for real. While Boreel was in Engeland during two tours on behalf of the Dutch government (1759/1760 and 1761-1762), he was constantly pressed by Backer to send home drawings and prints of gardens in England, as well as plants he had heard about. In the mean time Backer sent fruit from Boreel’s garden (Beeckestijn) and grapevines to England, in order that Boreel could entertain his guests during meals and have some gifts ready for people who he might want give one.

Let’s just hope that the current cutting of trees can confirm the early landscape layout I have discerned from Backers letters and cash register…

1. H. van der Eijk, “Sandenhoeff: een vroeg landschappelijke tuin?”, Cascade 18 (2009), nr. 2, p104-110. He called them ‘Americaansche boomen’ and paid for the complete package of getting trees from the other side of the ocean: retrieval, freight, transport and -not the least- provision.
   At the time, Dutch gardens were still laid out in a traditional manner, full blown landscape gardens did not appear till the 1780s. One of the first was Elswout itself, by the way, initiated by a member of the Boreel family. [back]

A visit to Saint-Cloud is a visit to a heavily restored and renovated garden. Even before one sets foot in the garden, attention is drawn to a board explaining that a storm in 1999 caused so much damage, that extensive restoration was necessary. In normal circumstances, the results of this work would really show. It does, but in a good way. Many avenues consist of younger specimens, but as they all are the same age, a sense of consistency throughout the garden prevails.
André Le Notre’s design for Louis XIV’s younger brother is still maintained and rejuvenated.

This consistency might have its roots in the history of the garden itself: in 1870, a fire destroyed the castle, leaving only the garden to focus on in terms of monumentality and maintenance. But that explanation is too easy, there is more.¹

Continue Reading »

1. Great pictures of the castle when intact, a depiction of the fire, and photos of the castle after the fire can be found following the links. [back]

There is a peculiar stand-alone altar in the gardens of Wörlitz, the famous early landscape garden laid out by the Von Anhalt-Dessau family from 1767 onwards. Standing near the kitchen building, close to the palace, it caught my eye when I visited the garden in 2009. The sides of the circular altar are dotted with reliefs of isolated figures, denoting the moon goddess Selene, Oceanos, some other figures and a few downward facing torches. It just seems a perfectly strange iconographic mix.

An altar as a weird conundrum, and as I thought at the time, quite unique.
An altar similar to this takes a prominent place in a portrait of Louise Henriette Wilhelmine von Anhalt-Dessau, painted in 1799 (picture obviously taken from a book cover). But the proportions do not match – the real one is thicker and lower- and the figures on the painted altar are closer to each other. Also, the Selene that is visible on the painting is in a slightly different angle in comparison with the real altar I saw at Wörlitz.

We could file those differences as the result of the artist’s freedom. But there are at least two of these altars, I found out during a visit to the Louvre earlier this year. Continue Reading »

Yesterday I made a flash visit to the Koepel van Stoop.¹ Having been there over a year ago, I thought I’d look how the then heavily pruned trees were holding up. I say heavily pruned, but I mean prepared for removal.
Continue Reading »

1. This building was built in 1840 for the Amsterdam banker J.B. Stoop, who intended to create an estate on this location. It was designed by architect J.D. Zocher jr. Problems with watermanagement on this location caused Stoop to choose an alternative location. In nearby Zeist he built Molenbosch, also a design by J.D. Zocher jr. [back]

Last week, the ‘Persian Garden’ was added to the Unesco list of World Heritage sites. The commission identified nine gardens in several Iranian provinces that exemplify the Persian Garden, from its inception 2600 years ago to the current state.

That current state differs considerably. Some gardens only show remnants of what once was, the northern garden of Bagh-e Abas Abad for example, or the very minimalist remnants of Cyrus the Great’s garden at Pasargad. Others, such as Bagh-e Fin in Kashan in the Isfahan province, are in pristine shape.

Thusfar the Unesco website only gives two pictures of one garden. We can do better than that. Not all gardens are represented in HGimages (the Historical Gardens photo group on flickr) yet, and the ones that are there do not show many photos. But that is work in progress and I thought it would be nice to get a visual idea of what these gardes look like now. In the list below, the links refer to these photos. No link, no photos.

The nine listed gardens are:

• Bagh-e Abas Abad | HGmap
• Bagh-e Fin | HGmap
• Bagh-e Chehel Sotun | HGmap
• Bagh-e Akhbariyeh
• Bagh-e Shahzadeh
• Bagh-e Eram | HGmap
• Ancient garden of Pasargadae | HGmap
• Bagh-e Dolat Abad | HGmap
• Bagh-e Pahlavanpur

Finally I would like to point at an amazing feature of traditional Iranian architecture, which I encountered while looking for pictures of these gardens: the ‘windcatchers’, as at Dolat Abad. It shows how inventive people can get when living in harsh conditions that -on the surface- seem to make living there impossible. It is the same inventiveness that made gardening possible here for over two and a half century. And counting.