Nunspeet – Today we left Amsterdam and travelled to the little town of Nunspeet to visit a unique garden complex built by one of the Netherland’s most successful landscape architects, Len Goedegebuure.
I had visited here a few years ago and was blown away by the amazing range of ideas presented in a compact five-acre space. It was even better this visit with more than a dozen distinctive styles of gardens represented from contemporary formal to Moorish to woodland.
What immediately impressed us were the rows of linden trees neatly clipped into sculptural cone-shapes that gave the site its definitive structure along with equally beautiful clipped yew and privet hedges.
Fearless pruning is a core quality of Dutch gardening. But there are also amazingly confident planting ideas such as using dozens of silver-leafed weeping willow pear trees (Pyrus salicifolia) to form a curving hedge or two or three closely planted ones to create a pillar of silver foliage.
Another eye-catching idea was what we decided to call Platform Pruning that features mulberry trees with their canopy ruthlessly clipped to form flat umbrella-like platforms as a ways of shading sitting areas on a patio.
From Nunspeet, we travelled south to Appeltern to visit an even bigger complex featuring more than 200 different kinds of model garden as well as countless inspiring ideas. This is a place where Europe’s gardeners can visit to see a vast range of garden styles and landscape materials displayed over 30 acres.
It was impossible to see it all. And it was a pleasure being able to move from one style of garden to another within a few short steps.
The quality of landscaping was first class and the planting in each garden was consistently excellent. There is nothing like the Garden of Appeltern in North America.
Sorry that there isn’t time to tell you more. I took dozens of photographs here and will be showing them later but it is time to set off on the next stage of our adventure to Floriade, the once-every-decade world expo of horticulture in Venlo.
Lovely topiary wheelbarrow and clipped trees at Appletern,
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