Historical Gardens

Earlier this month, the first step in the transfer of Beeckestijn to its new owners was finally completed by the transfer of ownership from the Velsen council to the department of DLG.¹ It has taken all parties involved almost 6 months to agree on the terms and conditions under which the transfer takes place. It is now up to DLG and the designated owners (Vereniging Natuurmonumenten, Vereniging Hendrick de Keyser and one private financier) to finalise the full transfer and present the new plans.In early July the new owners stated they would have the plans for Beeckestijn’s future ready and present them at a first exhibition in December 2007. The fact that now only the first step in the process has been finalised is evidence that these talks are more difficult than originally expected.If one looks at the constellation of the new ownership, it is hardly surprising these talks have taken so long. Every party involved at the receiving end of the deal has their own ideas and preferences for the future of the estate. And because the estate is not sold but traded for development areas elsewhere in Velsen, the parties that are giving Beeckestijn away also have a say in its future. The parameters set by the ‘giving’ parties are:

• the estate should remain open to the public (Velsen council).
• the new owners must be able to maintain the estate in a sustainable way for a considerable time (the Province of Noord Holland).
• [there used to be a demand to maintain the unity between house and park, expressed by the Velsen council earlier in the process, but I do not see this anymore]

On the receiving end, the parties involved have already shown they are capable of working together, but their preferences are difficult to combine. They need to find a balance between the ecological relationships between the garden and surrounding area one the one hand, and the simultaneous creation of a museum of gardening on the other, all within the parameters the giving parties have set.No one’s saying this will be easy, but the first step has been made.

1. See for more information on the transfer and the organisations involved here, here and here. [back]

You may ask yourself: “What does a picture of the moon have to do with historical gardens?”. My answer: more than you presumably think (and the fact that it is a great picture is in itself reason enough to show it here).¹ For example: for centuries gardeners have loosely scheduled large portions of their work -pruning, sowing, harvesting- on the moon’s cycle.²

Another way in which gardens and the moon can interact, is the way it is done at Beeckestijn. There, on the 1772 map of the estate, part of the menagerie is a circle with a plan that can best be described as a stylised map of the moon: the bright spot in the lower part of the circle is on the same location as the large crater on the moon’s surface, known as Tycho crater. The other forms and shapes -in essence: the lights and darks- may not resemble the moon for a bit, but that is less important. I’ll try to explain why I think that is the case -and why I believe this part of the garden symbolises the moon.Quality of the available source material is one of the issues to address. The large crater can be spotted with the naked eye (even from the largely urbanised place where I live, with nothing but ‘light pollution’ around), whereas the other parts of the surface can be difficult to discern without the right gear and instruments. To us, the actual surface of the moon is known and available in an instant, through top of the range telescopes, photography and internet. For people in the 1760’s, when this garden was laid out in the form known to us through the 1772 estate map, that wasn’t the case. Ofcourse people knew what the moon looked like, they may have looked at it better than most of us ever have. But we know what the moon ‘exactly’ looks like just because we have good representations of the moon’s surface at hand, enabling us to better understand the surface than we would ever be able to by seeing for ourselves. What they saw, is exactly the same as what we see. But their representations of the moon have left more room for interpretation than ours.

The picture on the right is such a contemporary representation of the moon’s surface. It was published in what in those days must have been the benchmark of knowledge: l’Encyclopedie by Diderot. This image is taken from the Astronomie-section in the VIIth part of that immense work, which was published in 1767-68.³ It shows the same view of the moon we have today. The engraving is a fairly exact representation of the moon’s actual surface, but there are slight differences, caused mainly by the coarseness of the engraving. Apparently this image was deemed a good enough representation of the moon; we could all go out at night and see for ourselves to check. But it is also a highly schematic representation of the moon, which allows room for interpretation and different views.

Thinking along those lines there is another issue: we must ask ourselves how important it may have been for the designers and owners of Beeckestijn to recreate an exact image of the moon’s surface. The fact that it sort-of resembled the moon might have been sufficient, just like the fact that Beeckestijn’s triumphal arch was probably painted on a piece of wood and would only have looked real from a distance. There are many, many more examples of these practices in The Netherlands throughout the ages, I mentioned a contemporary one earlier, from an English student in Leyden, traveling between Delft and Leyden in 1765:

‘The passage there is very pleasant, the gardens of the Merchants running the whole way down the river; by what I can see of the Dutch gardens they are infinitely inferior to ours, & seem to be greatly behind us in Taste, their only ecxellence is their neatness which is extraordinary - their decoration is odd, they fill their gardens with paintings, & if they want to lengthen a walk, they paint a gravel one on a piece of board, to deceive the Eyes & I saw more than one painted Aviry (sic)’.⁴ 

Besides that it still is a garden and no matter what message someone wants to convey with the design of parts of the garden, it still needs to be practical. In this case this means that where copying the exact surface of the moon would have left the owner with an unpleasant walk, the surface is stylised and adapted in such a way as to primarily work as a garden feature, and secondly convey an inaccurate, yet convincing image of the moon.

The interpretation of this garden feature is in my view obvious when we notice a similar styling on the opposite side of the central axis at Beeckestijn, where the flower garden forms a mirror-feature of the menagerie, both near to, and at the same distance from, the main house.⁵ Here we see a circular form, consisting of bend curved flower beds spiralling outward from an open centre. These spiralling flower beds can be viewed seen as the rays of the sun, and the whole flower garden as a representation of the sun. Both features have been identified as the moon and sun before.⁶ We cannot be sure whether these designs actually stand for the sun and moon, but it seems likely.

To return to the central topic with a question: why would someone be keen to have the moon visualised in the menagerie of his garden? There are many posible answers possible to that question, and it is very tempting to put one of these forward as a definitive one. But the truth is we don’t know at all. It is quite possible both garden feautures represented the ‘male’ (sun, flowergarden) and the ‘female’ (moon, menagerie), as we see happening in more gardens in The Netherlands: like an echo of the prince and princesse’s gardens at Paleis Het Loo in the 17th century. Antoher possibility is one that has been linked with the 1772 map earlier by Heimerick Tromp, where various garden features are said to contain symbols that point towards the Freemason movement.⁷ In this case he also identifies the moon on the 1772 map, but in a different section of the garden. The then owner of Beeckestijn, Jacob Boreel Jansz., is not listed as a freemason, but two of his grandsons (one also called Jacob, the other Willem François) became one later on. A tantalising hint towards Mrs. Boreel also being interested in the Freemasons comes from a letter sent to her husband Jacob by a friend, Cornelis Backer. At the time, Jacob Boreel was in London, sent out as an envoy on behalf of the Dutch government. It was his responsibility to maintain the right for Dutch ships to transport goods during the Seven Year’s War (in which The Netherlands were neutral, but the English accused the Dutch of transporting goods on behalf of the French, with whom England was at war -ofcourse we never did such a thing :0).⁸ Cornelis Backer wrote on the 11th of June 1759:

“Hede morgen had ik de Eer te ontfangen die van UHEdGest. der 8 jongstleden; ik heb daar op de papieren van UHEdGestr. rakende de free masson van Mevrouw Boreel; onder mijne recepisse ontfangen en zal daar op alvorens te berichten (…) met den Heer R.P. in den Haag spreeken.”⁹ 

Sadly, we don’t have the original letter and papers Boreel sent, and a reply on the subject is also missing (or: not found yet). It is strange that it was Mrs. Boreel who is mentioned in relation to this, because as far as I know, the Freemasons remained a strictly male brotherhood until the end of the 19th century.

In conclusion (for now): I believe the layout of the menagerie at Beeckestijn is meant to represent the full moon. It is not a direct copy of the moon’s surface, mainly because that probably was not important but it would also not be usefull as a garden feature people should be able to walk through. The date of the design must lie between 1760 and 1772, but it is possble the design leans heavily on the engraving in the Encyclopedie, pushing the date forward to between 1768 and 1772. The reason why Jacob Boreel chose to depict the moon in his menagerie is unknown, even when we take into account that it mirrors a representation of the sun on the other side of the central axis.

Comments and suggestions are very welcome.

1. Source: mattie_shoes photostream on flickr [back]
2. Gardener’s calendars at least until the end of the 18th century have an abundancy of references like this: “sow after the third new moon of the year” -although the religious calendar was very important as well, but in reformed Holland the saints -for obvious reasons- were not as important as elsewhere. [back]
3. The image is rotated, not just to put it in the same direction as the other images used here, but because we actually see the moon like this at our longitude. The Beeckestijn version must have been created in the same period: the style of the design is very much in line with what we know about the early landscape style, adopted in The Netherlands around 1755, but slowly finding its way into Dutch society during the 1760’s and 1770’s. [back]
4. He means to say: Aviary. James Harris to his father, September 16, 1765. Source: Hamphire Record Office (Winchester, England), Malmesbury family archive, inventory 9M73, inv.nr 262/5 [back]
5. The main house is the dark blob below in the centre. [back]
6. Joke van der Aar & Siebe Rolle, Een beeld van een buitenplaats: de tuinen van Beeckestijn, Museum Beeckestijn, Velsen-Zuid, 2000, p44-45. There is one problem with this identification: it can only be presented in a convincing way, when we take both features into account. It is difficult to prove these identifications when we focus at each individual feature. [back]
7. Cascade 15 [2006], nr. 2, p. 6-13. In Freemasonry, the sun and the moon are important elements. [back]
8. Holland wanted to hold on to a free-trade treaty both countries agreed upon in 1674. England felt the treaty was outdated and -mainly- did not serve their needs anymore, as England was on the rise and Holland had become an ecomically less important state. [back]
9. A selfmade translation, using some shortcuts: “This morning I received your [letter] dated June 8. I have also received your papers with regard to the Freemasons of Mrs. Boreel”. He goes on saying that he will discuss the matter with one of the highest politicians (the mentioned “R.P.”, which are not his initials, but those of his function: Raadspensionaris. I have yet to find an English equivalent for that. His name was Pieter Steyn, though.) in Holland, and he’ll reply on the subject later on. Source: Nationaal Archief, Boreel family archive, inventory 1.10.10, inv.nr 132 [back]

In a predictable turn of events, the arrangements surrounding Beeckestijn have led to questions in parliament (Tweede Kamer). Mrs. Snijder-Hazelhoff, member of parliament for the oppositional liberal party (VVD) and -according to her profile- dairy farmer in the northeastern part of The Netherlands, directed questions to the Minister of Agriculture (Gerda Verburg -CDA) on the legitimacy of the process, and whether other parties (read: market parties) have been considered in the process.

The last point should have been quite clear for someone with only the slightest grasp on the recent history of this estate: just over a year ago plans to sell the estate to a market party were blocked by both local and national politicians. I know we have had Italian-style changes in national and local politics in the past few years, but one would expect that someone would do some reading into a subject, before going public with questions like that.

However, one can see why she questions (pdf-link) the process followed in this case. As a farmer she must have dealt on a regular basis with the ministry of agriculture, and maybe its subsidiary Dienst Landelijke Gebieden (DLG -national service for rural areas) as well, and she might be worried. When local politicians were looking for a solution for Beeckestijn, DLG stepped in with a solution favourable to almost everyone: DLG would be taking over the estate and some surrounding grounds in exchange for areas in DLG’s possesion in Velserbroek, part of Velsen. In addition to that, Velsen would get the opportunity to use these new grounds as a development area, in which way they’d secure a bigger revenue for losing the estate than by just selling it to the highest bidder. In the mean time, Beeckestijn would be ‘passed on’ by DLG to nature preservation society Natuurmonumenten and partners, who declared they wanted to restore and maintain the estate. Everybody happy.

Except for the farmer whose land lies in Velserbroek, within the area given away by DLG as development plot. Continue Reading »

It is official: Beeckestijn as complete estate is saved (to the left: an image of only half the territory as pictured on the 1772 estate map by architect Johann Georg Michael).
Last Thursday evening (it only took them ten minutes) the Velsen council voted in favour of plans to exchange the estate against development plots elsewhere. This vote marks the end of over 5 years of uncertainty for the estate and the people involved. A lot of damage has been caused by the uncertainty: in the meantime the museum has closed and its collection has been distributed around the country. The garden is maintained on only a minimal level.

So the ambitious new owners have a lot of work cut out for themselves (see my two previous posts for more information about them). Their aim is to present a plan for a centre for garden and landscape architecture before the end of this year, and that will be a big task. The bottomline of today must be the fact that Beeckestijn will venture into a new period in its long history, though. Once again a period of hope commences.

(In my previous post I reflected on Beeckestijn as being eyed by two organisations -Cascade and Stichting Nationaal Tuinmuseum- in their efforts to create a garden museum in The Netherlands. Comments on the Cascade weblog indicate that they are currently not involved in talks about the future of Beeckestijn. To be continued, I’m sure.)

According to a report in Haarlems Dagblad, Beeckestijn will become a centre for garden and landscape architecture. A spokesman of Vereniging Hendrick de Keyser reportedly said as much in a meeting with the Velsen town council last Thursday. Later this year a they will present a plan, together with prospected co-owner Natuurmonumenten. Dutch garden history society Cascade have meanwhile teamed up with the Foundation for a Dutch National Garden Museum (Stichting Nationaal Tuinmuseum). Both organisations have cast an eye on Beeckestijn as a possible location for such a museum.

The Velsen town council is currently preparing a decision on the plan presented by the mayor and aldermen to exchange Beeckestijn against grounds nearby. The meeting of last Thursday must be seen as a step in that process. According to Haarlems Dagblad the council will probably agree with the plan. A decision is expected within a few weeks.

The mayor and aldermen of Velsen yesterday announced that they plan not to sell the estate Beeckestijn. Instead, they will exchange the estate against land currently owned by the National Agency of Rural Areas (Dienst Landelijk Gebied -DLG). DLG is part of the department of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (Ministerie van Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit -LNV). Included in the exchange are the recreational area and some pastures next to the estate. The local council will have to decide on this exchange within the next few weeks. Continue Reading »

The Dutch ministry of agriculture, nature and food quality (LNV) has presented an updated list of estates, falling under the Natuurschoonwet, which are open to the public. The Natuurschoonwet (difficult to translate) basically concerns a law, introduced in 1928 with the aim to protect estates by giving the owner fiscal benefits when they present suitable plans to preserve the estate. The estate should have a size of at least 5 hectare, of which a large amount consists of woodland. A size of 1 hectare is enough to qualify for fiscal benefits under the Natuurschoonwet for estates which are important from a historical point of view. The gardens and woodlands surrounding castle Rosendael are an example of one of the estates for which the Natuurschoonwet is applicable.
The list of estates is updated twice a year. The latest version can be found here. As the list only concerns estates for which the Natuurschoonwet regulations are applicable, it does not present a complete list of Dutch estates that are open to the public.

(Update@8-Feb-2007: Beeckestijn was awarded a place on this list as early as 1930. The Dutch newspaper Het Vaderland reported on December 2nd of that year, that Beeckestijn, together with neighbouring Waterland, Heerenduinen (also in Velsen) and Tusschenwijck (in Wijk aan Zee) was going to be protected under the Natuurschoonwet. All four estates were owned by J.G. Boreel van Hogelanden, Esq. Talk about fiscal benefits….

Of these four estates, only Heerenduinen is on the current list now. Why the other three are taken from the list, and when, is not clear to me. To be continued.)

Interesting stories emerge from documents produced by the council of Velsen. Finally, the minutes of the last debates of the old council have been published in November (debates dating back to Januari and March 2006). It is fascinating to see how desparate the former council was to get Beeckestijn sold before the elections in March 2006. Staring into the headlights of the upcoming local elections -with devastating results predicted- the former council had the brilliant idea to upgrade the opinion on one of the bidders for Beeckestijn during a meeting in which these bids were discussed.¹ The new council has now made plans to get Beeckestijn sold before July 2007 to be able to get the budget in check with the financial wishes of the province, under who’s supervision the council operates (in a sort of ‘Chapter 11′ situation). But: surprisingly good returns on several ground speculation projectes suddenly yielded around €7 million towards the council’s treasury in the last months. Meanwhile, the opposition (i.e. the former counsil) starts questioning these returns. ² Continue Reading »

1. Council meeting March 2, 2006, Mr. Westerman: “Voorzitter, GroenLinks is, in tegenstelling tot Velsen Lokaal, er niet van overtuigd dat er zorgvuldig gewerkt is. Wij hebben dit vanaf juni jl. regelmatig herhaald. Ik blijf hierbij en het is gisteravond wederom geïllustreerd omdat de wethouder ineens, ter plaatse, bij het staatje nulletjes in plusjes begon om te zetten. Dit had tot gevolg dat bieders die dit hebben gehoord, vandaag raadsleden benaderden en vroegen ‘Waarom is dit bij die bieder wel gebeurd, maar bij ons niet?’. Het betekent, wethouder, dat u hiermee de kans op een juridisch probleem oploopt. Over zorgvuldigheid gesproken!” [back]
2. Council meeting November 8, 2006, remark from Mr. Vosse [opposition]: “In de tweede tussentijdse rapportage, die verscheen na de aanbieding van de begroting, bleek dat uit de afronding van een aantal grondexploitaties ineens een bate van zeven miljoen boven water kwam. De LGV vraagt zich dan af waar de specificatie van dit enorme bedrag blijft. Om welke grondposities en projecten gaat het eigelijk. En was – en dat is helemaal een merkwaardige zaak - van de gerealiseerde deelprojecten in voorgaande jaren niets bekend? Of is er – om welke reden dan ook - een geheime spaarpot aangelegd voor het nieuwe College?“ An explanation in the same minutes delivered by Mr. Ockeloen. [back]