Historical Gardens

In this earlier post I mentioned the design by T. Henry Reetz for the garden of Paleis Het Loo, which discovery was made public by Cascade. They also mentioned that the upper part of the garden that had not been restored in the past decades, would be restored in 2007, taking this new design as an example.

In order to be able to compare the Reetz design from 1706 with the current situation -before the restoration takes place, as well as with a plan from ca 1725 by C.P. van Staden, I’ve created the following image (click on image for a larger picture with more detail):

LTR: the 1706 design by Reetz (from the Cascade weblog), the 1725 design by Van Staden (from the site of Paleis Het Loo) and the situation as available on Google Earth today (image probably winter 2005/2006).

In the mean time I have been digging up some more information on the architect mentioned in my previous post: T. Henry Reetz, though it is hard to really get a grip on this architect.

He was born in France, in 1685, and probably moved to Berlin soon after. He must have had an early talent for drawing, because the first architectural drawings we know of are dated 1695 -he was ten years old then. In 1706 he is enlisted in the Brandenburg army, as an architect and engineer. On the 5th of July 1706, Reetz was ordered by the “Geheimen Rat” (secret counsil) to draw reconstruction plans for the Moritzburg in Halle. The drawings have survived, but there are no signs that the plans have actually been executed. In 1707 he traveled into Italy, and after 1713 (the year the Prussian king Frederick I died and in which Hofarchitekt Johann Friedrich Eosander left the court as well) Reetz went to Paris. Continue Reading »

The Cascade weblog presents a picture of the latest discovery concerning Paleis Het Loo in Apeldoorn: a previously unknown design for its gardens. The design is dated 1706 and made by T. Henry Reetz (1680-1765), “königlich preußischen und kurhannoverschen Hofarchitekten” in Berlin.

At the time, Reetz worked for one of the people who unsuccessfully claimed rights to the Dutch throne after William III died in 1702 (thus ending the dynasty of part of the Nassau family): Frederick I, King of Prussia.
Reetz also drew designs for three other Dutch palace gardens Frederick had set his eyes on. The designs must be seen as a serious preparation for his rise to the throne. It must also have been one of the first serious projects for the young architect -of which I know next to nothing: even Thieme-Becker does not mention his name.

Cascade’s next bulletin (2006-2) will feature a complete article about these discoveries, written by the curator of Het Loo’s gardens: Ben Groen.

Update (Feb. 4, 2007): the site of the province Gelderland provides us with a report on the ins and outs of the way the groundwater surrounding Paleis Het Loo is affected by the extraction of water on behalf of the museum’s fountains. It also gives a nice look at the complexities of managing fountains at a site like this, where not only economical and ecological issues are important, but where the quality of the water and the vulnerability of the materials the fountains are made of also come into play. The report is in Dutch.

Nationaal Museum Paleis Het Loo has almost been penalised, because of leakages in the basin in the Venus fountain. In order to sustain the waterlevel in the fountain, fresh water had to be drawn from the soil, causing major changes to groundwater levels in the surrounding areas.

‘t Loo palace in Apeldoorn/ HollandOriginally uploaded by Maup Smits en zijn foto’s worldwide.

The provincial government threatened the museum with a fine, but has decided yesterday (November 7th, 2006) not to pursue. A request from the museum to withdraw more water has been approved by the province of Gelderland, which argued that in the past two quarters the museum kept groundwater withdrawals within the existing limits. Ironic in this respect is the fact that one of the main jobs of our crown prince is… water management. Think he’s pulled some strings on this one? After all, Paleis Het Loo is a former Royal Palace…