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Symphony

in green

Inspired by the music of
Gustav Mahler, garden designer
Ronald van der Hilst set out
to create drama and a sense
of rhythm in this Dutch garden

TEXT CLARE FOSTER
PHOTOGRAPHS ALLAN POLLOK-MORRIS

arden design is at its
most interesting when
it reaches out across
the disciplines, drawing
inspiration from the arts
and architecture. For
this Dutch garden, the
defining art was music,
and specifically Mahler’s
Sixth Symphony, which
G garden designer Ronald
van der Hilst happened to be listening to on the way back
from his first visit to the garden. ‘When I listen to Mahler,
I see landscapes,’ he says. ‘Listening to the symphony,
you experience different emotions, themes and struc-
tures, and it’s the same in this garden. There are strong
marching rhythms and quieter sections, sudden wide
vistas followed by inward-looking spaces.’
Dutchman Ronald was commissioned in 2005 to
redesign the garden for businessman Willem Boer, who
has since passed away. Situated in the east of Holland in
traditional farming country, the garden is distinctively
Dutch, with its clipped evergreens and simple water
features to mirror the sky and landscape. It was previously
a patchwork of small flower gardens with pollarded
catalpas and ‘lots of different ideas’. It was a garden that
very much looked in on itself, and Ronald’s first thought
was to reconnect it with the surrounding landscape of
arable fields and old oaks. Willem immediately under-
stood his approach, as Ronald remembers: ‘After our
first rondje tuin, as Willem called our garden walks, I
remarked that the catalpas seemed like aliens in this
pure and beautiful landscape. The next time I visited, the

Beautifully shaped undulations of box near the house contrast
with the cruciform pond and the angular walls of hornbeam beyond.
The garden is designed to link to the surrounding pastoral landscape
with framed views and indigenous oaks to give it a sense of belonging

HOUSEANDGARDEN.CO.UK NOVEMBER 2015 197