Historical Gardens

The Copenhagen conference on climate change of the upcoming week shall be dealing with serious challenges for our planet, economies and lifestyle. It is conceivable that climate change, if it is not stopped or stopping of its own accord, will also have an impact on our gardens. Planting (im)possibilities and shifting flowering times immediately come to mind.
Smaller changes in weather or climate are of course quite common, and have always been. The winter of 1822 has apparently been a warm one in The Netherlands, judging to the fact that a newspaper article used the example of one shrub that had been in bloom during the whole winter, to illustrate that point.¹

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).
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After last night’s surprising victory over England by the Dutch cricket team, which has caused both a shock and words of praise in Britain, one has to wonder where it all began. Certainly, cricket in Holland has never grown into a large and important sport, but as it turns out it was introduced at least as early as 1765.
The earliest reference to cricket in Holland I know of (mind you, I am not an expert in cricket), comes from the Boreel family, the owners of Beeckestijn. In reply to a request dated 23 August 1765 by Willem Boreel, Jean Palairet (agent in London of Willem’s father Jacob) confirms he had bought 4 balls (12 shilling) and 12 bats (12 shilling).¹ A week later he writes extensively about the name of the ship carrying the “masses de jeu de crickett et des douze boules”, but somehow forgets to mention the ship’s name itself.²

In his first letter Palairet states that he is still on the lookout for a rule book. Although these ‘Laws of Cricket‘ existed since 1744, a printed rule book based on revisions agreed upon in 1774, was not published until 1775. So it is safe to say that the Laws of Cricket probably never made it across the North Sea earlier than that.
That would not have stood in the way of a good match at Beeckestijn, though, because back then the game knew many different rules and forms. A major standardisation of the game only came about in 1809. The fact that none of the open areas in Beeckestijn’s garden is big enough to house a cricket field by modern standards, would not have posed a problem: the first laws of cricket only dictates the size of the pitch, the distance between the wickets and where the bowling and popping creases should be. The size of the surrounding field where the field players are, seems to have been open to interpretation and circumstances.
Finding opponents would not have been difficult as well. Willem attended college in Leiden (Leyden), at the time a university which drew students from many countries in Europe, including many from England.³

If we were to play a match on Beeckestijn by modern standards, we would be forced to play on a field just next to the garden proper, now in use as a meadow for horses (see my poor rendering of that situation on the left).⁴ Instead, wouldn’t it be nice to commemorate the 1765 introduction of the game at Beeckestijn with an annual historical cricket game, taking place at either the small or the big field in the landscape garden the family created in exactly the same period? Attention in the media and any proceeds of the game could then be used to support the future exploitation of Beeckestijn, after all one of te most important gardens in The Netherlands.

How on earth did Willem Boreel learn about cricket so soon? Continue Reading »

1. These amounts are confirmed by a receipt in the Boreel family archive. [back]
2. Both letters from Palairet are kept in the Boreel family archive at the Nationaal Archief in The Hague. Willem Boreel’s request has not yet been found. [back]
3. Willem Boreel became close friends with James Harris, later the first Earl of Malmesbury, who attended classes in Leiden from September 1765 till the spring of 1766. [back]
4. This field is now an important archaeological site, making it highly unlikely a game would ever be played there. [back]

The menagerie at Beeckestijn, which might be recreated in the future, has not existed for very long. We first hear of it in the early 1760’s and it was probably replaced by a greenhouse in 1784 (which in its turn was demolished in 1957). The fact that the new coalition for the preservance of Beeckestijn has produced plans in which both a menagerie and a greenhouse are among the star attractions, and at the same time suggest that by doing so, the history of this garden can be respected seems a bit odd.

That being said, it is ofcourse true that in order to preserve a location like this, one sometimes needs to cut a few corners to reach a valuable compromise. I should say I fully support the job these people and organisations are doing, and I am glad that the State Secretary for culture has opposed the plans of the counsil of Velsen to sell Beeckestijn to the highest bidder, because the proposed sale conflicted with their own rules for selling the estate.

An interesting idea for the preservation of Beeckestijn. This museum and important historical garden in Velsen is in danger of being sold to parties who will probably not see the recently restored gardens as an asset.
The Stichting Vrienden van Beeckestijn (foundation of Friends of Beeckestijn) launched some plans (in Dutch), one of which is to keep a collection of wild animals at the estate in an attempt to attract tourists. At the moment, the future of council-owned Beeckestijn is uncertain; the museum is now closed, awaiting a decision concerning its future. The foundation states the unknown new owners should need to strengthen the bonds between the museum and the gardens, the wildlife being one of the means to do that.

This is a fine idea, however it will all depend on the way things are set up. The original 18th century design of the Beeckestijn gardens included a Menagerie, a recluse for exotic animals. We know there was a greenhouse around the 1800’s.
A few suggestions: we know there has been a white cockatoo in the 1760’s. From previously unpublished correspondence of Willem Boreel, son of the owner, we know that he’d ordered a few specimen of the ‘Rossignol de Virginie’ in 1765.