Plotting Nature: Curiosity and Control in Dutch Garden Design

Written by Sophia Kamps

Edited by Alicia Wilson

The visual culture of a society can take a variety of forms. Everything from paintings and sculpture to advertisements and illustrations document the way a culture viewed and represented the world. More difficult to study are the ephemeral visual artifacts, produced in their time but long gone in ours. Gardens are one such artifact. We can never see the Dutch gardens as they stood in the Seventeenth century, because they are, by nature, places of impermanence and change. However, we can learn about the design of Dutch gardens from the documentation created in their own time. Garden plans and maps preserve the stylistic quality of Dutch gardens therefore we can learn about the way in which gardens were shaped by and reflect the culture and values of the society that produced them. Of particular interest are the garden plans of  of Johan Maurits’ garden in Brazil which demonstrate the expression of the Dutch values of order and practicality, as well as Dutch curiosity about the exotic through its innate characteristics as a curiosity cabinet of plants.

For the first half of the Seventeenth century, there were few innovative strides made in  Dutch garden plans and the majority of their designs were based on the Italian mannerist model of elaborate decorative motifs and complex organizational patterns [1]. However, these stylistic influences began to be shaped by Dutch culture and values as a more uniquely “Dutch” form of garden design emerged in the latter half of the Seventeenth century, following the development of the Dutch classicist model of gardening [2]. In classicist gardens of the Dutch Republic, Italian and French influence was seen in the ornamental decoration and skilled detail [3]. Simultaneously, however, “there was an underlying tendency to plainness and utility in the Calvinist background of Dutch gardens [4]. Dutch gardens took from the French and the Italian styles of gardening, pointing to an example of pan-European influence which encompassed the Netherlands as part of a larger European world of cultural exchange [5].  

Figure 1: Jan Saenredam, The Foolish Virgins, (c. 1601-1625).

Nevertheless, Dutch values were very clear in the gardens themselves. The concern for organization and mathematical precision in the layout, the emphasis on practicalities such as drainage practice and the technicalities of planting, as well as the tendency for enclosure demonstrates the way that Dutch garden design became an expression of the Dutch values of order and industry [6].  The emphasis on symmetry came from a classical mode of design, as Dutch architects looked back to ancient Roman architects for inspiration. In this way, Dutch garden design can be seen as both Calvinist and humanist. It looked back at classical values of design in the same way the Republic looked back to classical values of government.

The contradiction between Calvinist values and capitalist realities inherent to much of Dutch culture was also present in Dutch garden design. In garden plans, the garden was a place of carefully controlled beauty, subscribing to the Calvinist virtue of the organized cultivation of the land. However, in actuality the garden could be seen as a place of temptation and ungodliness. The most obvious point of reference for gardens for a Dutch audience was the Garden of Eden-- a “quintessential example of a garden in which evil lurks beneath apparent beauty,” [7]. The beautious and lush quality of gardens could be seen as an erotic symbol or a place of courtship. The garden as a place of lovers is a common trope in Dutch scenes taking place in imagined gardens where mythological and or allegorical figures would partake in worldly pleasures in what are often warnings about the corruptibility of man (Fig. 1). With these pre-existing conceptions of the garden as a dangerous place of pleasure, the challenge of the Dutch garden design was to find a “balance between the sensual and the intellectual,” [8]. Dutch success and wealth was represented in lavish and colorful flower beds or parterres, for which the Dutch became renowned throughout Europe, but the garden itself had to be a taming of the land. Its design had to show the victory of human will over savage nature. The Dutch sought to create a place used for pleasure and distraction, based on “sober forms to which an industrious Calvinism tended,” [9]. Perhaps the only purely Calvinist depiction of gardens are birds-eye-view garden plans, where the possibility of human corruption amongst colorful flower beds and abundant trees is not shown and instead the garden is reduced to the lines and shapes of human control. 

Figure 2: Frans Post, Plan of Vrijburg Palace and garden; from Barlaeus’s Rerum per Octennium in Brasilia Et alibi nuper gestarum, sub Praefectura Illustrissimi Commitis I. Mauritii Nassoviae, & Comitis, nunc Vesaliae Gubernatoris & Equitatus Foederatorum Belgii Ordd. Sub Auriaco Ductoris Historia, (1647).

This complex combination of mannerist garden design and Dutch values can be seen in the gardens of Hofwijck (1640). Designed by Jacob van Campen, with oversight from Pieter Post for Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), a leading Dutch intellectual, Hofwijck was a small country estate [10]. The estate proved a very influential example of Dutch classicist architecture and garden design for future Dutch estates as a result of Huygens’ country house poem which was written about the estate called “Vitaulium: Hofwyck en Spaansche Wijsheit,” [11]. Intended as a peaceful retreat from city life, the estate, and Huygens’ writings about it, expressed Dutch, Calvinist attitudes towards beauty. In his poem, Huygens posits that only symmetrical nature can truly be beautiful, as that is what God intended for his creations [12]. He argues for a highly utilitarian view of nature, where neatly planted oak trees may easily be transformed into neatly chopped wooden planks [13]. Hofwijk was Huygens’ way of imitating nature in the symmetrical forms God intended. The symmetrical forms were expressed in every aspect of the estate, from the cube form of the house, to the two symmetrical drives lined with lime trees that came to meet in front of the house [14]. The garden plots were also symmetrical, with the house at one end of the estate, and an obelisk at the other end of the estate, encasing the estate from two key points. Each area of the garden was carefully contained by rows of trees or hedges, emphasizing the enclosure of the garden space from the natural world that surrounded it. The design of the house and garden was documented in an engraving in 1653 (Fig. 2). In this engraving, the same symmetrical qualities of the estate are expressed through the neat divisions of the engraving into rectangular areas containing different views of the estate, all centered around the bird’s-eye view of the entire estate. 

The aspect of enclosure in the design of Dutch gardens was a particularly important expression of a larger cultural anxiety of the time: interior spaces, exterior spaces, and the spaces that lie between. The garden acted as an awkward in-between space. Interior spaces were the realm of women and the family, safe spaces free from the threat of external corruption. Public spaces were the domain of men, but also spaces that could be inhabited by those on the outskirts of Dutch society like the poor and homeless. The garden presented a conundrum to this distinction between interior and exterior. It was quite literally outside the home, but was still a space of private ownership. Both women and men could experience the garden and, as previously mentioned, the garden was often seen as a place of corruption. The fact that the garden was a space that existed between inside and out was addressed in the Dutch tendency to enclose their gardens within layers of hedges and trees, and often even situate them with rivers and roads forming the borders of the garden, as was seen with Hofwjick where one edge of the garden was a river. 

The garden of Johan Maurits (1604-1679) at Vrijburg palace in North-East Brazil had many of the characteristics of a Dutch garden that were exemplified at Hofwijck, but these characteristics took on new meaning in the colonial context. There are many connections between the two estates. Pieter Post worked on both projects, [15] and Huygens and Maurits were close friends. Indeed, Huygens oversaw the building of Maurits’ house and garden in The Hague while Maurits was serving as administrator of Santo Antônio de Recife,[16] a Portuguese settlement turned over to the Dutch after their 1630 invasion of Portugese Brazil. It was there that Vrijburg palace was built. The Dutch characteristics of geometric, controlled layout, practical use of land, and enclosure were all present in the garden. Planted amidst the vast Brazilian wilderness, the garden intended to erase the power of the wilderness and place its vegetation into a strictly controlled environment. To quote Maria Angélica da Silva and Melissa Mota Alcides, 

 “... following the general Dutch principles of organization, the plants were submitted to the rigid order clearly visible in the garden plan. Removed from their natural context, groups of identical plants were arranged geometrically. What in nature was seemingly disordered, incomprehensible, chaotic and infinite was now subject to the principles of symmetry, proportion and balance,” [17].

The Dutch focus on practical use for the garden, making it not only a place of pleasure but a place of usefulness, was also present at Vrijburg. The legend of the garden plan reveals that the garden was organized by function and that the medicinal qualities of plants were tracked and taken into consideration with the design of the garden [18]. Additionally, the garden served the practical purpose of feeding the settlement because it was part of a larger project of protecting local nature and creating a food source for the local population [19]. Part of the garden was reserved for growing “manioc,” a main source of food in the area [20]. The garden was carefully enclosed, both by its location on an island, and through the construction of hedges and rows of trees. 

Figure 3: Hofwijk, from Constantijn Huygens’s Hofwijk (1653). 

The values expressed in Dutch garden design took on new, colonial meaning in the context of Brazil. A design which in the Netherlands was a statement about shaping the land to the will of God becomes a statement about shaping a wild, uncultivated country to the will of the Dutch. Vrijburg was “a way of taming the chaotic Brazilian flora and fauna by submitting it to the principles of Dutch culture, ” [21] representing a larger mission of bringing Dutch culture to a foreign land. By creating a Dutch garden in The Netherlands’ Brazilian colony, the Dutch made a statement about Europeanizing the land and bringing their own values to their colony.

However, the colonial use of Vrijburg garden wascomplicated by its dual nature as both a Dutch garden and a curiosity cabinet of plants. This duality paralleled the larger quality of Dutch colonization where a belief in the superiority Dutch values and the exploitation of colonized peoples were balanced with a fascination with exotic objects and the urge to learn and understand native lands and cultures. In his garden, Maurits sought to create “a spatial miniature of the natural world that erased the power of the wilderness by confining its hugeness to a small, enclosed area,” [22] Here, the local plants could be used for botanical research and experiments [23]. Maurits was attempting to both submit the natural world to his will and to study and understand its power. This fascination with the exotic also presented a reversal of influence. While Dutch styles and values were brought overseas in Maurtis’ Vrijburg, the exotic plants being cultivated at gardens like Vrijburg would often be brought back to the Netherlands and integrated into the Dutch mode of gardening. In this way, the Dutch garden in Brazil represented both a curiosity with local plants and an exchange of influence wherein the Brazilian garden reached back to the Netherlands and shaped those gardens just as Netherlandish gardens shaped it. 

The design of both Hofwijck and Vrijburg are preserved through topographical garden plans that represent an impossible, idealized view of the gardens and a form of advertisement of Dutch garden design. The plan for Hofwijck was a print created to accompany Huygens’ “Vitaulium: Hofwyck en Spaansche Wijsheit” (1653), his poem about the estate. The plan of Vrijburg and its gardens (Fig. 3) was etched for Rerum per Octennium in Brasilia Et alibi nuper gestarum, sub Praefectura Illustrissimi Commitis I. Mauritii Nassoviae, & Comitis, nunc Vesaliae Gubernatoris & Equitatus Foederatorum Belgii Ordd. Sub Auriaco Ductoris Historia (1647), a book by Caspar van Baerle (commonly known as Barlaeus), a humanist poet commissioned by Maurits to chronicle his administration of Brazil [24]. 

These two plans represent the gardens in their most symmetrical and geometric form, through a birds-eye-view, not the reality that most visitors would encounter. It is a view that illuminates the symmetrical, organized and contained nature of the garden more fully than actually walking through the garden. Both engravings were commissioned by the owners of the gardens and published for wide consumption. This was not an unusual occurrence. Many owners of elaborate gardens and estates would commission plans of those estates for publishing, because the money spent on developing such houses and gardens was an investment in the social and political power of the patron, and they wished to advertise this power [25]. The translation of the garden into a bird’s-eye view was not one of “neutral depiction,” [26] it was an idealized one, and one with a purpose of advertising the values and achievements of the owner of the garden. The garden plan allowed the owner of the garden to advertise his achievement to a much wider audience than would ever be able to visit it. Therefore, the garden plan is designed to show off the most important traits of the Dutch garden: its organization and symmetry. 

In some ways, Dutch gardens were a very minor part of Dutch art production. They were not as popular or prolific as paintings, nor were they as long-lasting as architecture. Nevertheless, the gardens of the Dutch republic represented a microcosm for a variety of issues and tensions present throughout Dutch art. The design of Dutch gardens was a balance between Calvinist simplicity and capitalist excess, between religious visions and republican classicism, and between colonial ambitions and inter-continental curiosities. In the layout and design of Dutch gardens, symmetry and order were emphasized. Simultaneously, the plants used demonstrated a keen interest in the exotic. Through the creation of a Dutch garden in the Dutch colony in Brazil, Dutch attitudes towards the land were transposed upon land they were colonizing, but also native plants were appreciated, studied and sent back to the Republic, thereby shaping the gardens back home. 

Endnotes

1.  Kahren Jones Hellerstedt, Gardens of Earthly Delight: Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Netherlandish Gardens (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Frick Art Museum, 1986), 4.  

2.  W. Kyuper, Dutch Classicist Architecture: A Survey of Dutch Architecture, Gardens, and Anglo-Dutch Relations from 1625 to 1700) (Leyden, The Netherlands: Delft University Press, 1980), 125. 

3.  David Jacques and Arend Jan van der Horst, The Gardens of William and Mary (London: Christopher Helm, 1988), 10.

4.  Elizabeth Boults and Chip Sullivan, Illustrated History of Landscape Design (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons), 133. 

5.  David Jacques, “Who Knows What a Dutch Garden Is?” Garden History 30, no. 2 (winter 2002): 116

6.  Jacques and van der Horst, The Gardens of William and Mary, 10.

7.  Hellerstedt, Gardens of Earthly Delight, 29.

8.  Jacques and van der Horst, The Gardens of William and Mary, 15. 

9.  Kyuper, Dutch Classicist Architecture, 154.

10.  Kyuper, Dutch Classicist Architecture, 153.

11.   Kyuper, Dutch Classicist Architecture, 153.

12.  Curtis Whitaker, “Andrew Marvell’s Garden-Variety Debates,” Huntington Library Quarterly 62, No. ¾ (1999), 305. 

13.  Kyuper, Dutch Classicist Architecture, 154.

14.  Kyuper, Dutch Classicist Architecture, 154.

15.  Maria Angélica da Silva and Melissa Mota Alcides, “Collecting and Framing the Wilderness: The Garden of Johan Maurits (2604-79) in North-East Brazil” Garden History 30, no. 2 (winter 2002): 156.

16.  Jacques and van der Horst, The Gardens of William and Mary, 13.

17.  da Silva and Alcides, “Collecting and Framing the Wilderness,” 156.

18.  da Silva and Alcides, “Collecting and Framing the Wilderness,” 163.

19.  da Silva and Alcides, “Collecting and Framing the Wilderness,” 158.

20.  Robert C. Smith, “The Caetano Prospect: An Eighteenth-Century View of Recife in Brazil,” The Americas 10, No. 4 (April 1954), 406. 

21.  da Silva and Alcides, “Collecting and Framing the Wilderness,” 160.

22.  da Silva and Alcides, “Collecting and Framing the Wilderness,” 160.

23.  da Silva and Alcides, “Collecting and Framing the Wilderness,” 168.

24.  Ernst Van Den Boogaart “A Well-Governed Colony: Frans Post’s Illustrations in Caspar Barlaeus’s History of Dutch Brazil,” The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59, No. 3 (2011), 237.

25.  Jacques, “Who Knows What a Dutch Garden Is?” 115.

26.  Jacques, “Who Knows What a Dutch Garden Is?” 115.