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]

• Koepel van Stoop

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• View from the Koepel van Stoop

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• View from the north

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• Seen from the west

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• Almost removed beeches in May 2010

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• Beech trees removed (November 2011)

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• This horse chestnut is also cut down

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Photos HvdE 2010 and 2011.
Mind: this slideshow may not work well on iPad.
Fact: clicking any separate picture in the slideshow opens the original image.

I don’t know why I thought the trees were just heavily pruned, I probably did not want to think of the more rigorous option, which also resulted in cutting down a horse chestnut just north of the building. A little bit of reading could have pointed me in the right direction.
The building is in use as a studio for the artist Mijpe since 2005. Her website shows the reason for the removal of these trees: a storm in May 2009 damaged a number of beech trees near the building. To avoid damage to the cupola -which was restored in 2003- by the remainder of the trees, these have been removed from March 2010 onwards.

My only question is: is there any plan to replant the group of trees on this location? A photo in the archive of the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (RCE) shows what a background they offer, a magnificent view that is now lost. I’m guessing the trees dated back to the 1840s, and as such are part of either that design by Zocher, or of the initial plans for the establishment of an estate on this location by Stoop. Both arguments speak for a completion of the 2003 cupola restoration in its original context (i.e. cupola complete with group of trees).
Or do we accept the gradual loss of quality and context between this building and its surroundings?

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]

Here’s just a quick reminder of the variety the garden designer has at his or her disposal. In an interesting -although lenghty- article in the latest issue of Garden History, Ben Lennon as an aside mentions a 19th centrury addition to the mainly 18th century garden of Tottenham Park, near Marlborough.¹
As a new access road to the adjoining Savernake Forest with 18th century avenues and features, an avenue of horse chestnut and common lime, planted in alternate fashion, was realised in the 19th century. Large portions of this avenue still exist.²

Maybe there are examples of this combination elsewhere?

1. Ben Lennon, ‘Burlington, Brown and Bill: the landscaping of Tottenham park and Savernake Forest in the eighteenth century’, in: Garden History 39:1 (Summer 2011), page 26. [back]
2. The park is not open to the public, reason why images are scarce. [back]

One of the key components of the plan was to partly replant the hedges that had screened off the retaining walls of the terrace around the house. A local weblog shows a detail of the plan, where the hedges are vaguely visible along the edge of the terrace below the house. Although that blog post is just over a year old and the previous owner was still in place, the emphasis is on the restauration of two garden buildings, not on the hedges.

The postcards to the right show the situation before 1910. On both sides of the grand stairs leading up to the terrace (or down into the garden), hedges block the view at the retaining walls. This was not only the view from the garden but also from the sunken public road running past the house (Duinlustweg -it still is the view). The walls are not completely blocked, but enough to soften the blow of the eye hitting an ugly wall.

That wall is visible on my photo below, taken in 2007. The stairs need to be exposed, they are therefore covered with a layer of -now deteriorated- cement. The parts of the wall that should be covered by hedges simply consist of unembellished bricks. The photo also shows that hedges are now planted on the elevated terrace, effectively blocking the view from outside at the plants on display in the terrace garden.
I don’t know when the current situation was created, but it obviously misses the elegance of the original layout. The idea of blocking the view at the wall was clearly better than the current situation. The retaining wall is similar to electricity units or other utility buildings in gardens: they are necessary, but one doesn’t want to see them. Plants are used to cover things up. In Dutch a term for that kind of planting is ‘schaamgroen’,  a degrading term which practically reflects the reason of its existence and also the poor quality of the way these areas are generally fitted into larger historical layouts. But the tiny postcards above show that it doesn’t have to be that way.
So I hope the new owners of Duinlust will pick up the restoration plans somewhere and get themselves some quality schaamgroen real soon.

So when someone added this photo to the flickr photo group, I immediately thought: where are the hedges gone?

The hedges stood in front of the curved retaining wall. It is part of the central feature in the garden: a circular area, with four small stairs leading up to the raised center where a statue is placed (since 2007 – replacing an octogonal bird house that stood there earlier). That situation, before the birdhouse and hedges were removed, is visible here:

All hedges that stood in this area seem to have been replaced by young planting, except the ones on ground level right in front of the wall. The purpose of these particular hedges was to conceal the retaining wall. In the original design people were not supposed to have a clear view at the wall, they may have been lead to believe the hedge itself retained the soil behind it. That design choice, quite a usual approach in early 20th century garden design, is now discarded.
The photo of the new situation is made by Infrastucturas Sostenibles Sando, whose subsidiary Althenia has recently worked on several parks in Málaga. I don’t know which design choices have caused the complete removal of these hedges, but it is a pity they have not been replanted. Not because I like clipping hedges that much, but because -again- an original design feature has gone.

(Click the link behind ‘HGimages’ below this post for more photos of the garden.)

Don’t get me wrong: I like that they replant the avenue and that they are using the same sort of tree. The removal of the trees has been approved by the local council (in this case: Lisse), who needs to at least give permission for that part of the process. Ten trees have already died and been removed over the last few years. Gradually replacing them would be an option, but the owners want to convey the effect of an avenue with trees of about the same age and height. They will replant the trees in two shifts.¹
The new beech trees are said to be of size 70-80 (girth circumference in cm at a height of 1m), which means they are 6-7 meters in height (? please correct me if I’m wrong here). That is quite a considerable size, but while calling this a replacement might be linguistically correct, visually it hardly is.

And historically?

The message contains interesting information, if the estimate of 180 year old trees is correct. There is no knowledge of changes in the layout around 1835-1840 (when an 1830 seedling would ‘usually’ have been planted). J.D. and L.P. Zocher are known to have worked at de Keukenhof in and around 1854.² This means that if the estimate is correct, the Zochers originally planted 20-25 year old trees in this avenue. We know that is -and was- possible, that is not the interesting part.
What interests me is that the current owners apparently choose to plant trees that are much younger than the current ones have ever been (on this location, ofcourse).

And thus create a beech-lined avenue the Keukenhof has never witnessed before, despite their efforts to ‘maintain the character of an avenue as Zocher intended’. History, being made as we sit behind our computer, typing. This might become more interesting than I thought…

Edit 21/10/2010 I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion here: a few hours after typing the above I took out a tape measure to see what a 70 cm circumference actually looks like. Those new trees at the Keukenhof could easily be of the same age the Zochers used in 1854. Ea-si-ly.
Hope to find out exactly how old they are soon…

1. I do not want to go into the current debate ‘should we replant an avenue gradually, or all at once?’, but I’d like to say this.
   It is a hot topic as many beech lined avenues dating from the first half of the 19th century run the risk of being completely wiped away by owners who care more about the safety of their visitors than about cutting away old trees. I do understand their choice, because they are responsible (or will probably be held responsible) when someone gets injured or dies after being hit by a fallen tree or big branch. But I would also like to stretch that there are many situations where the risk is low, besides the fact that the risk of getting hit by a falling tree is part of being outdoors.
   Whichever decision is made, it should not be insprired by a dogmatic stance, but by careful assessment of the situation and weighing of the risks. [back]
2. It is a pity that a garden magazine mentions J.W. Zocher, when the man was really called J.D. Zocher Jr., ánd worked together on this project with his son L.P. Zocher, but hey: we all make mistakes. [back]

The trees on the smallest island have all been chopped away, but no replanting has taken place here. The result is an eery blob, sticking out of the pond like an outgrown pimple.

• Broekhuizen after the restoration.

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• Broekhuizen during the restoration in 2008.

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• The islands in 2008.

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• The small island in 2010.

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  Clean cut and shaven.

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• The new plants on the bigger island.

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  Too much and too linear, if you ask me.

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All photos by HvdE.

The bigger island is even worse, although here not all trees have been cut and replanting has taken place. The choice to plant Rhododendron here is good, both islands needed some lower plants and colour. It won’t win the landscape architects Bleeker and Nauta a designer’s originality prize, but it works.
What does not work and what constitutes the gruesome part of this bigger island is the way the new shrubs have been planted: in strict alignment and in MASSIVE amounts. I do not know who is ultimately responsible for this, so I’ll resort to two personal remarks:

1. They could have easily done with 2/3 of the plants used here (so they would have had enough material left to replant the smaller island with -if that was at all the plan). I cannot see a reason to plant so closely together on a location where people cannot come: they are not likely to make short cuts through a more loosely planted section, are they?
2. The absense of creativity is exemplified by the placement of the Rhododendrons. It is almost as if indicating altitude lines on the steep slopes of the island was part of the assignment.

The immense density of plants, forced into a grid-like planting scheme, is evocative of how Staatsbosbeheer used to ruin forests and ‘nature’ in The Netherlands till far into the 1980s. Since then the organisation has been re-evaluating and adapting that practise. If responsible for the execution, it has somehow forgotten about that in this project. But looking at the planting scheme the density is a blessing: within a few years nobody will notice anymore.

1. Adding this footnote because I stumbled upon the website of the last private owner of Broekhuizen. He has a lot of pre-restoration photos and photos of the interior that are usually not easy to find. According to the sales brochure, the interior has remained relatively intact, so this way we can see what the interested parties will see tomorrow, Thursday May 27th. [back]

But Wingfield hardly mentions the plants he used. Almost at the end of his description of the terraces he writes:

The pleasure grounds are filled wih many kinds of rare plants and shrubs, many of which would not be hardy in England, but which thrive in the temperate climate of the Green Isle. Rare conifers as well as deciduous trees are scattered through the grounds, and those which I have myself planted are now growing to a considerable size, Wellingtonias, araucarias, and others having reached a height of fifty and sixty feet, and even more, (…).¹

He then goes on to talk about a few specific plants and species, but I would like to zoom in on the araucarias he mentioned. A few pages earlier he writes about the terrace walk, which he extended to a lentgh of 800 yards (730 meters), running outside the garden at the (south)western end ‘as far as the level ground permitted, to the edge of the slope at the oak-wood called “The Dead Man’s Bank”‘. He placed a statue of Ajax at that end and

(…) planted an avenue of araucarias and abies Douglasii from the part where the garden terminates to this statue.²

I know Wingfield was proud of the variety of plants that thrived in his garden. But combining Araucaria araucana and Pseudotsuga menziesii (‘abies Douglasii’ is a synonym) seems like stretching things to their limit. I would at least never have thought of this combination if I were asked to plant an avenue of mixed evergreens in a period garden, and know of no other examples.

1. Mervyn E. Wingfield, A Description and History of Powerscourt, London (1903), p95. The araucarias he planted himself were in a grove further from the house, near Bahana and Onagh Bridge (op. cit. p107). He planted 100 of them, ‘thinking that in future times his would make a remarkable feature of the place’. [back]
2. op. cit., p90. [back]

It grew in the garden of Beeckestijn, which is not far from the coast -and thus already in a milder climate because the relatively higher temperature of the sea water dampens the effects of winter in this part of the country. In the article the plant was called a “Pyrus Japonica” and it is possible that here the Pyrus japonica (Thunb) is meant; we now know this plant as Chaenomeles japonica, a prickly plant bearing fruit that ripens very late in the year.
But it could also be the fine plant with small white flowers called Pieris japonica.² Both plants were discovered or first described by the same botanist, Thunberg.
Carl Peter Thunberg was a Swedish student of Linnaeus who lived from 1743-1828. He studied in Uppsala, Paris, Amsterdam and Leiden. In The Netherlands he joined the Dutch East India Company (V.O.C.) and traveled to Japan in December 1771. He returned in 1778 after visiting Japan and China and a short stop in South Africa on the way back. In 1784, back in Sweden, Thunberg published his Flora Japonica sistens plantas insularum japonicarum… (etc.), in which the Pyrus japonica is mentioned.

The news article goes on to say that the plant had 150 flowers in bloom in February 1822 and an equal amount of buds ready to go. A rather remarkable claim is that the plant was 8 feet (voet) high, which- if we take the (then) normal Rijnlandse Voet as a reference, would amount to a height of 2,54 meters. This means the plant must have stood there for quite a while, or had been planted there at a fairly old age.
The contemporary owner of Beeckestijn, Willem François Boreel (1775-1851), was a keen gardener, but at this stage he had owned the estate for only nine years -not enough to have a plant like this grow this large.³ The original creator of the landscape garden at Beeckestijn had died in April 1778, six months before Thunberg returned from his voyage to the east. So the Pyrus japonica mentioned in the news article, probably a Chaenomeles japonica, has almost certainly been planted in the garden by Willem Boreel (1744-1796) or his wife and widow Maria Trip (1750-1813).

1. “Haarlem, den 18 Februarij. Als een zeldzaam bewijs van de zachte luchtsgesteldheid, kan men aanmerken, het gedurende den geheelen winter in de opene lucht bloeijen, van eene Pyrus Japonica, op de hofstede Bekestein, onder Velzen. De gemelde plant heeft thans de hoogte van 8 voeten bereikt en bloeit ter hoogte van zes voeten. Men telt aan dezelve 150 bloemen en ruim zoo veel knoppen.” ‘s Gravenhaagsche Courant, 18 February 1822, page 1. [back]
2. There is one obvious and popular mistake in the writing of the name, so we can’t exclude other possible mistakes made by the journalist or during the printing stage. [back]
3. In 1821 he had won a silver medal on a countrywide exhibition for an especially large and heavily blooming Metrosideros citrina (now Callistemon citrinus).
   [back]

There’s a hint of earlier developments taking place in the 1750s, based on 18th century remarks that are vague¹, or made decades after the ‘fact’.² My recent addition to that short list is published as one of the many different articles in this new book.³ It might not be regarded better than the other examples, because I am writing about a garden that has been demolished in 1804 and of which we do not have any visual record.
My findings with respect to the garden of Sandenhoeff in Overveen do show that it was quite difficult for garden owners in Holland to acquire knowledge about the new gardens in the 1750s and early 1760s. Despite the abundance of knowledge that by then had been built up at the other side of the North Sea, in England.

But the account book entry of a payment for 60 American trees and seeds, made by Sandenhoeff‘s owner Cornelis Backer (1692-1766) in April 1756, can not mean anything other than this: he was trying to create his own landscape garden. And as this payment was also for the delivery of the plants, he may have even started in 1755.
Too bad no visual record of the garden seems to exist.

(Edited to add the correct title of the book and the names of its main editors)

1. The Swede Bengt Ferrner mentioning a ‘natural’ layout at Watervliet, 1759. [back]
2. Harmannus Numan writing in 1797 on developments at Over-Holland that had supposedly taken place from 1756 onwards -a claim that to my knowledge has yet to be confirmed. [back]
3. Henk van der Eijk, ‘Sandenhoeff: een vroeg landschappelijke tuin?’, in: Cacsade 18 (2), 2009, p104-110. Available in stores as: Arinda van der Does, Jan Holwerda (editors), Tuingeschiedenis in Nederland. Veelzijdig erfgoed in ‘t groen (Utrecht 2009). [back]