Beyond the Tulip and the Garden Gnome:Garden Adventures in the Netherlands, Germany & Belgium7 to 15 September 2008Download tour flyer and registration form Sunday 7th September We gather midday at Schiphol Airport just outside of Amsterdam, after direct flights from the US arrive earlier that morning. Participants arriving a day or more in advance find connections to Schiphol Airport from Amsterdam or elsewhere in Europe to be easy by train or plane. Transfer by bus to eastern Holland to tour the gardens of Mien Ruys, the most influential Dutch garden designer of the 20th Century, whose family home in Dedemsvaart reflects her groundbreaking modernist design ideas. We make a short drive to visit Priona Garden, the naturalistic garden of artist and garden writer Henk Gerritsen, filled with his interesting and quixotic installations. We continue by bus to Apeldoorn, where we spend three nights, and have our first group dinner. For centuries a relatively small town near the favourite country home of the Dutch royal family, the nearby Palais Het Loo, Apeldoorn now serves as the gateway to the Veluwe, a large expanse of woodland, heath, small lakes and sand drifts.
Monday 8th September We spend the morning through lunch at De Tuinen van Appeltern, a uniquely Dutch phenomenon – the model garden park – featuring nearly 25 acres of garden design, planting and practical information (and cafes and other diversions). We then head northeast of Arnhem a short distance to De Wiersse, a country home, garden and landscape park of wide acclaim. Stay night in Apeldoorn.
Tuesday 9th September Deep in the Dutch countryside, we visit the private garden of Piet and Anja Oudolf and Oudolf Nursery. Piet is known as a leading proponent of the New Wave garden movement, using sweeps of perennials (especially grasses) in a naturalistic manner. Anja runs the nursery, and while we can’t bring any plants home, just browsing may make you want to rethink your own garden. This afternoon, we head to the Kröller-Müller Museum, world-renowned not only for its superlative collection of Van Gogh paintings, but also for sculpture garden, comprising outstanding pieces ranging from late 19th Century art to the present, sited in 50 acres of beautifully landscaped grounds. Stay night Appeldoorn.
Wednesday
10th September This morning we depart by bus for Germany, stopping in the village of Bedburg-Hau close on the border to visit the small but published Lucenz-Bender Garden.
Then we continue to Duisburg and the Landschaftspark Duisberg Nord, where we are given a tour of this remarkable industrial site that was abandoned in the late 1970s. The area has been transformed into a gigantic regional park by Latz + Partner, a German design firm specializing in large-scale landscape projects particularly focused on regeneration. The size of the buildings here – the blast furnaces and gasometer among them - is staggering.
After touring the Landschaftspark, we proceed to the adjoining Kleingärten, the community or allotment gardens, which had their genesis in the writings of a 19th century German naturopath, Daniel Schreber, who believed the citizens of the rapidly urbanizing and industrializing cities would reap health benefits by spending time raising their own fresh produce on these small plots of land. The popularity of the Kleingärten persists today, even if kitchen garden often seems supplanted by kitschy garden.
We continue to Düsseldorf for the first of two nights there, with a group dinner on the first night. Düsseldorf is a fashion and media capital for Germany, located along the banks of the Rhine River. In the Altstadt, or old town and environs, you’ll find a major shopping district with excellent restaurants and indigenous breweries offering Altbier, an old fashioned beer with a pleasingly bitter taste served in small cylindrical glasses.
Thursday
11th September We drive through the industrialized river valleys east of Düsseldorf to Ronsdorf, where we visit Arends-Maubach Nursery, founded in 1888 by Georg Arends, and home to many celebrated hardy plants, among them a vast array of Astilbe hybrids and Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’. Today the nursery is run by his great granddaughter, Anja Maubach, herself a much sought-after designer.
This afternoon we explore the roots of European garden design – from Greek and Roman times through the present - at the concise and fascinating Museum of European Garden Art at Schloss Benrath back in Düsseldorf. The palace, completed for the Palatine Elector Carl Theodor in 1770, includes a three-wing maison de plaisance and extensive grounds including an orangery, a potager, and hunting garden. Stay night Dusseldorf.
Friday
12th September A further day of garden visits in the Düsseldorf area includes a trip to the Museum Insel Hombroich in nearby Neuss, where we wander through a natural preserve laced with art displayed in strikingly modern galleries. The art – ranging from the ancient to the modern – is freed from chronological organization and any kind of identification. Instead, we’ll experience it, in the landscape! Close by, at moated Schloss Dyck, site of Germany’s first landscape garden, we view – or more accurately, nearly get lost in - a monumental grass garden.
Back in Düsseldorf, we tour an example of a green roof, considerably more commonplace in Germany than in the United States. Stay night Dusseldorf.
Saturday
13th September Departing by bus to northeastern Belgium, we visit the charming De Horne garden in Vechmaal, owned by Jean and Riet Vanormelingen, and lunch next door at Herberg De Horne, where their son, Stijn, is chef. This small garden, designed by a leading Belgian landscape designer, Dina Deferme, serves as a backdrop for many pieces of sculpture.
After lunch, we continue down the road to Kasteel Hex. Open only twice a year, this 18th Century chateau features topiary hedging designed by another of Belgium’s renowned landscape designers, Jacques Wirtz. With all due respect, however, it is the garden fair, held on the second weekend of September, that draws us here – a big sale of plants, garden tools and other accessories, and wonderful handmade preserved foods, candies, and liqueurs. The chateau’s grounds include an extraordinary potager. Think renaissance fair meets HPSO plant sale in a bucolic Belgian village, and you’ll begin to get the idea!
We drive to Antwerp in the late afternoon for the first of two nights there. Belgium’s second-largest city, Antwerp boasts a long history as a center for trade, with many of the riches of the Age of Exploration – spices, silver, and textiles, for example – arriving first in this port city. Flemish artists including Peter Paul Rubens lived here, and a large community of Orthodox Jews also blossomed. Today, Antwerp is Europe’s second-largest port and the capital of the European diamond trade.
Sunday
14th September Today we visit another garden designed by Jacques Wirtz in the Antwerp area, and then head to Kalmthout, site of Europe’s largest arboretum, for a tour. Our next stop is De Hemlerijk in nearby Essen, home of Robert and Jelena de Belder, former curators at Kalmthout and plant collectors extraordinaires (known particularly for their collection of Hamemelis). Their home includes perennial borders conceived by the renowned American designer, Russell Page, who often took refuge here.
We conclude our stay in Antwerp with a farewell dinner, on this, our last night of the tour.
Monday
15th September Depart by bus for Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands, stopping en route in the village of Heerle to visit the garden of Laura Dingemans. This Dutch garden designer and nurserywoman has built an exquisite collection of garden rooms furnished with lovely stone work and water features, and a wide array of beautifully combined trees, shrubs, and perennials.
Transfer at Schiphol Airport for flights back to the US or flights or trains to other destinations elsewhere in Europe. Copyright © 1998-2007 The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon.
|
