Garden at Oud Aa
Private Garden in the Green Heart
The Green Heart, the central green open space in the Randstad, is the design theme for the garden of the Van Galen family in Oud Aa. Formal features of the landscape of the Green Heart – water, grassland, reed beds, dikes, orchards and poplar fields - have been applied to the garden design. The house and garden occupy a site of about 5000 square metres. An old channel of the river Aa runs through the garden, dividing it into two roughly equal plots, a north-western and
a south-eastern plot. The new house has been built on the edge of the south-eastern half next to the old river arm, in a central location in the garden. The location of the house played an important part in the design of the garden: the southern facade of the house is clearly oriented to the south-eastern plot, but the northern wall turns its back on the north-western part of the garden. The oval ground lay out and the dike on the outer rim bind the two plots together. The soil used to build the dike was obtained by removing the top layer of soil from around the edges of both plots over an area of about 2000 square metres, 2/5 part of the original plot. This area has been lowered by 20 centimetres, allowing a collar of wetland vegetation to develop around the garden and creating a transition zone between the garden and the surrounding landscape. The existing pollard trees in this zone have been retained and grow now on new designed islands which serve as an intermediate between the garden and the existing woodland. The orientation of the house towards the south has been picked up by the designers and used to accentuate the independence of the north-western plot in the garden layout. Also in this part of the garden the Green Heart theme takes on a prominent role. There is a slightly raised orchard and a poplar field, with an old boundary ditch running between the two. The poplar field is continued alongside the house in the south-eastern plot. In this part of the garden the dike rises gradually to a height of 2.5 metres providing a lot of privacy for the owners. Below the dike is an ornamental garden with an outdoor patio. In the south-western part of the garden a second oval form was created in which a lily pond, backed by a screen of swamp cypress trees can be found. The idea of creating a relatively open garden that reflects the landscape of the Green Heart was made possible by the presence of an adjacent wooded plot. Designed by Hans Warnau, this small wood acts as a natural border to the garden. It was planted as part of a land consolidation scheme in the mid 1970s, a time when the National Forest Service encouraged the planting of woods on small plots in this part of the Green Heart.
Client: Mr. And Mrs van Galen
Architects: Paul van Beek, Charles Vermaas, Paul van Beek landschappen, with Michel van Unen; (land scapearchitects) Jaco de Visser, Ellen Schilt, architectenbureau Jaco de Visser (architect); Odette Ex, Hans Hensbroek, Ex Interiors (interior decorator); Pieter d’Hont (sculptures) Paul van Galen, Van Galen constructies-laswerk-apparatenbouw b.v. (bridges and gates)
Area: 0.5 hectares
Constructed: 1999 by firma Jan van Schie
