Wim van Wassenhove’s Garden, Belgium

After 4 years of living in Belgium, I realized, to my great dismay, that Belgian gardens have been greatly under-represented on this blog. Isn’t it so often true that we ignore what we have at home and look away for inspiration? In my defense, I think I can explain why this happened.

First, Belgium is surrounded by some of the finest gardening nations in the world – the Netherlands, Germany, France and the UK. The temptation to go beyond the borders is therefore somewhat understandable. But given its illustrious neighbors, one might also naively think that Belgium is the place where these influences come together to create a gardening epicenter. Alas, it is not so. As I discovered soon after moving, the most important criteria in shaping the Belgian landscape are neatness and practicality, resulting in some rather sterile gardens.  What the Belgians seem to love more than anything else are immaculate lawns, tight hedges, and all manner of pruned, trellised, pleached and espaliered plants. I believe nothing delights the average Belgian more than running outside the instant a new leaf grows beyond the planned geometry of the garden and promptly snipping it off.

Although this may sound like mocking, I have gained a lot of respect for the Belgian approach to landscaping. Training plants into geometrical shapes can be a very valuable tool in the landscape, one that I think is under-used in North America. In Belgium, the technique has been greatly refined over the centuries, and is now perhaps best embodied by the innovative work of Jacques Wirtz. Unfortunately, most of his work is in private gardens and estates, and therefore not accessible to the lowly blogger.

A Wirtz hedge in his private garden. More on his work can be found in this nice article in the NY Times as well as a post on Grounded Design, where I found this picture. 

Instead of Wirtz’s iconic work, I will talk about some small, private, and more plant intensive gardens that I visited as part of the Belgian national open gardens scheme. The first was Wim van Wassenhove’s garden. I actually went to this one by mistake, but after spending 2 hours getting there by bus, train and foot, there was no turning back (and I certainly don’t regret it). Van Wassenhove is a landscape designer and nurseryman practicing in the western part of Flanders. Immediately upon entering his garden in the tiny village of Zedelgem, it’s clear that he also has a healthy level of that famous Belgian hedge gene. Neatly trimmed boxwood greets the visitor at the front door, and a tall yew hedge carefully encloses the entire front garden.

The path and hedges leading up to the front door, and the gate to the front garden.  

At the back of the house, hedges are again in the spotlight. The backyard is defined by strong horizontal and vertical lines. The horizontal lines build up in layers, starting with the brick terrace, then the long rectangular pond that parallels the terrace, followed by the dividing line between the lawn and field, and finally the horizon line. As you go away from the house, the lines get increasingly less defined, amplifying the sense of depth. At right angles with these are the strong verticals, represented by neatly trimmed hedges. The hedges are quite narrow, and run in parallel rows that lead the eye out to the larger landscape. Van Wassenhove is, by the way, the designer who told me he uses laser guides to install and trim hedges in clients’ gardens to ensure perfect straight lines.

Moving from the back of the house to the end of the garden reveals the details of the horizontal and vertical structures. The long rectangular pool is a more formal version of the small canal dividing the property from the fields at the back of the garden.  

The central axis is very powerful, but a lot is happening on the sides as well. Neatly trimmed boxwood rectangles are scattered throughout and combined with level changes to create an interesting play of geometrical shapes. The picture is softened by looser plants inserted in between, creating a nice overall balance.

Trimmed boxwood, loose plantings and creatively used sculptures and accents work together to create a balanced and interesting picture.  

In addition to this garden, which is quite ‘designed’ and I think pretty representative of the Belgian style, there is a second flower garden. This secret garden is completely out of the way and separate from the main garden, concealed behind the greenhouses and potted beds used for the nursery. This is very typically Belgian – to hide the loose and flowery bit somewhere in the back, and treat it almost as a play area that shouldn’t interfere with the real garden.

This flower garden looks almost like a nursery itself. It’s set up as several parallel paths with borders in between (instead of potted plants). There is a lot of plant material here, and it is well grown. Obviously van Wassenhove loves his plants, even if he chooses to only use them sparingly in the rest of the garden. I visited in the middle of June, which wasn’t yet the peak for this garden. There were a lot of ‘new perennials’ in the mix (no doubt the Dutch influence next door), but surprisingly few grasses. It seemed like more of a traditional English border, but using modern plants.

Plants such as Knautia macedonica, cranesbill geranium and some roses were the highlights in early June. The purple groundcover in the bottom picture is Phuopsis stylosa purpurea, a plant new to me.  

The last area of the garden was the most naturalized. It followed a small canal, of the kind traditionally used to divide fields in the lowlands. In this narrow, boggy area, named varieties of plants mingled freely with gnarly, pollarded willows and field grasses. It seems that the Belgians can let loose after all, even if only in the furthest recesses of the garden.

Karl Foerster Garden, Germany

The name Karl Foerster is enough to inspire awe in many gardeners, particularly those of us interested in perennial plantings and naturalistic design. Foerster first made a name for himself as a plantsman based on his innovative plant selections at his nursery in eastern Germany. Starting all the way back in 1903, Foerster looked at plants in a different way than most people. He wanted perennials that were sturdy and looked good massed, and was drawn to plants with elegant but strong flower spikes. His earliest work was with delphinium (a rather un-slender flower spike), but grasses soon became a favourite. Today, few gardens are without Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster'.

The grass aisles at the Foerster nursery - uhhhhh.

In addition to plant selection, Foerster also dabbled in garden design. In the garden adjacent to his nursery, he experimented with a naturalistic planting style by combining grasses and massed perennials to achieve an overall meadow effect - an approach starting to sound almost too familiar today. His work is credited with greatly influencing the New German style of planting and the naturalistic planting movements that have since followed.


Clearly there is a lot of history at the Karl Foerster garden, so my expectations ran high. But as usually happens in these cases, the image built up in my mind did not exactly match the reality on the ground. The first surprise was the size. This is a small private garden created around the front and back of the family house. So expect a short visit to a tiny garden!


The second surprise was the content of the garden itself. I, unfairly, expected a very modern garden, one that would have been eons ahead of its time in the early 1900’s. But today the garden doesn’t look revolutionary to us, it just looks like something we’ve seen before. The plants are now familiar, and the style is hardly radical. It’s difficult to imagine how people viewed this garden during Foerster’s time, when annual bedding schemes and roses were the norm. It’s also hard to know how much the garden itself has changed over the years, as its maintenance has passed through several generations (currently Foerster's granddaughter).


Viewed with today’s eyes, this looks like a richly planted garden with an interesting mix of perennials, grasses and large trees, built around a fairly classical framework. In the back of the house is the rock garden, with mounded rocky beds and winding paths. There were many interesting examples of grasses here, such as the soft Carex alba planted between rocks. This garden is now quite shaded by large trees, conditions which seem less than ideal for some of the grasses.

Carex alba and bergenia softening rocks.

The front garden is definitely the highlight of the visit. It’s a symmetrical garden built around a rectangular, sunken pond. It reminded me a bit of the water garden at Castillon-Plantbessin, one of my absolute favourite places. This one is almost just as good, which means I’m now officially in love with sunken pond gardens. The plants were tightly packed, and included a lot of the perennials and grasses we are now used to seeing. Overall, it seemed like a nicely designed perennial garden, but I didn’t get the sense that the style was ‘naturalistic’. Many perennials fit the naturalistic palette, but there were relatively few grasses and massed plantings. Regardless, it’s a little jewel of a garden which makes for an inspiring visit if you don’t bring along too many preconceived ideas.

Glen Chantry, Essex, England

The Chelsea Flower Show was a great and unforgettable experience, and you’d think the extravagance of attending it would be enough. But actually, it was only the beginning of a long weekend of visiting beautiful gardens in England. I was completely spoiled!

After the show in London, we went off to Essex to visit the great gardens of Beth Chatto, one of my (many) gardening heroes. Since our time was limited, we decided to stay in Essex and visit some more gardens in the area. Each was unique and different, and each impressed me: the arid, hilltop garden at RHS Hyde Hall Gardens, the perfectly maintained nursery garden of Glen Chantry, and the wild and romantic Gibberd Gardens. We finished off with the “mother of all gardens”, the Royal Botanical Gardens Kew back in London.

The first garden on the tour was Glen Chantry. Owners Wol and Sue Staines have been developing this garden since 1976, along with a nursery for perennials. The site is 3acres, slightly sloping, and the design is informal. The majority of the garden is taken up by large borders chockfull of plants - it looks and feels like the perfect English garden. The flawless colour coordination was really noticeable - no plant was just placed somewhere to fill an empty spot.
One of the features of the garden is a sequence of ponds and streams that that runs through the site, which provides habitat for moisture loving plants. I particularly noticed some amazing specimens of Carex "Bowles Golden" grass, which made the one in my old garden look like a poor excuse for a plant.
Lastly, there is also a huge rock garden at the front of the house with what seems like hundreds of miniature plants many of which were blooming during our end of May visit.

Glen Chantry is first and foremost a plants garden. If you want to see what a plant looks like when grown to perfection, this is the place go. The colour and foliage coordination was also beautiful. And as a gardener, I was also marveling at the impeccable state of the whole site - I'm not sure how much help the owners have, but every bed was perfectly edged, every space perfectly balanced with plants and there was not a weed in site. A beautiful garden, but if you want to visit, this year is your last chance. The owners will be closing the garden and nursery at the end of the year, while still carrying on with "serious gardening" privately.