Style and vision
A geometric garden in the Netherlands where the planting has been inspired by the ideas of designer Piet Oudolf
Just over an hour’s drive from Amsterdam, on the scenic floodplain of the River IJssel, there rises an extraordinary house of impossible angle, like a book part opened. Owners Willem and Josée de Haan have an eye for and love of contemporary design, and this has been extended from their ultra-modern, minimalistic home into their accomplished garden. They moved here in 1996, seeking refuge from town life, and settled on the small enclave of Fortmond, where for sale they found a former farmhouse, a cow shed and two-and-a-half-acres of land.
“We demolished the cow shed and got an architect to design a modern living area,” explains Willem. This section offers wonderful views of the garden and landscape through the floor-to-ceiling windows. “But the bedrooms and bathroom were still in the old farmhouse,” he says, “so in 2012 we commissioned another architect to design something to replace it. At first, we were refused planning permission, as the design was seen as too strange.” To ease the planners’ concerns, they suggested a berm or bank that could wrap around the front of the property, sloping in the same direction and at the same angle as the roof, which would be clothed in plants. With this softening and greening of the design, permission was granted.
By this time, Willem and Josée had begun work on the garden. “Our last garden had been designed by a landscape architect, but here we wanted to do it ourselves,” Willem explains. He describes the style as “geometric forms with nonchalant planting in between” inspired by the naturalistic style of Piet Oudolf.
Rugged clay pavers, reclaimed from a former brick factory, lead down into the back garden, where beds of late-summer perennials including Phlomis russeliana, Agastache ‘Blackadder’, Persicaria and Actaea give a sense of enclosure without blocking the wider view.
The garden is demarcated with a grid of large, gravel squares, and dominated by two rows of purple-leaved Prunus cerasifera
‘Nigra’ trees. Further structure is provided with low hedges of clipped berberis laid along the limits of the old cow shed, and taller hedges of copper beech that divide up different areas, the repeated dark foliage giving a soothing consistency to the underlying framework.
At the centre are two matching, rectangular lily ponds. The planting areas that separate and surround them comprise many plants for autumn interest, such as Japanese anemones and ornamental grasses, as well as chunky blocks of groundcover, such as vincas, hostas and geraniums. Their lower profile ensures a clear eye-line from the house out across the surrounding fields, into which the outer garden merges seamlessly. Willem created this effect by using curated-looking planting near the house, and more naturalistic schemes further out, which then flow into a band of wildflowers – the same ones that grow in the De Duursche Waarden nature reserve beyond.
In the front garden, the berm is populated with trees including a southern beech and a fig, blocks of Ophiopogon and Ceratostigma,
and flurries of Echinacea purpurea ‘Alba’, Phlox and Deschampsia, as well as Salvia uliginosa and Limonium platyphyllum. Along both sides of the house there are more planting beds, one designed by plantswoman Lianne Pot, and varied wildflower schemes created from site-specific seed mixes by the company Cruydt-Hoeck.
The garden has clearly been crafted with meticulous attention to detail, and it is proof that much-cited design principles do work. As well as borrowing from the landscape, and starting with a strong structure, Willem has repeated essential dimensions to make the space feel harmonious. “The steel beams in our living space create squares of 4m x 4m,” he explains, “so I also used that measurement in different ways in the garden. The gravel squares are 4m x 4m, the ponds are 4m x 8m, the berberis hedges are 2m x 2m.”
This has resulted in myriad views – wherever you stand in the garden, there is a different outlook – while cleverly screening the tourists on the busy canal that runs alongside with a simple stand of trees and shrubs. Not that there is much time for the couple to take in the view themselves, with such a large garden to maintain. In summer, they open to visitors – some 1,000 this year – as part of a local gardens group. Autumn is their most mellow time, when they can enjoy the changing colours and developing seedheads, before a frantic burst of winter activity from late January, when they cut it all down and weed and mulch everything.
It has been a steep learning curve, but Willem and Josée couldn’t be happier with the result, and Willem has sage advice to offer other gardeners starting out with a new space: “Don’t think you will have success in one or two years – it will take ten. Have patience.”
USEFUL INFORMATION
Address Fortmonderweg 47, 8121 SL Olst, the Netherlands. Tel +31 (0)570 564 317. Web detuinvanfortmond.nl Open By appointment.