Museum Garden of the Permeke museum by Plant en Houtgoed

Plant en Houtgoed developed the outdoor environment of the Permeke Museum into an ecological experimental museum garden. The Permeke Museum contains the family home, painting studio and sculpture studio of modernist artist Constant Permeke. It is surrounded by a vast garden amid what was once a very rural setting. Architect Pierre Vandervoort designed the plan for the De Vier Winden country house in 1928 in close consultation with the artist. This is where the artist lived with his family from 1929 until his death in 1952. It is also where he received his friends and fellow artists and where much of his oeuvre was created.

At this country house museum, an ecological and experimental garden was designed as an extension of the museum operation. A green space, supported and inspired by nature where visitors and local residents (the park garden is freely accessible) can relax and where Permekes various sculptures are given a natural setting. A garden that experiments with biotopes, biodiversity and interaction between art and nature. The design integrates and reinforces the still preserved elements from Permekes time, such as the sunken garden, central hedge structure, the beautiful tree frame,… The design reworks some of the interventions carried out in the 1990s and reinforces the landscape and ecological value of the garden by means of the contribution of a network of biotopes. The mowing patterns and regimes create hay meadows and tightly mowed lawn areas and guide vistas towards the surrounding open polder landscape. The orchard fans out and is given a counterpoint on the west side by the contribution of a kitchen garden; an element close to Permekes heart thus regains its place in the garden after a long period of absence. There is plenty of experimentation with thermophilic and pioneer vegetation in the sunken garden and in the hedged former foliage corridor.

The intention of the garden is to create a good starting situation by introducing or strengthening various biotopes and landscape structures. These are now further guided in their evolution by Plant en Houtgoed in a ‘Design by Maintenance’ formula by monitoring the natural processes inherent to these biotopes, giving them opportunities and adjusting them where necessary. This creates a dynamic whole, an ecosystem that year after year gets the chance to evolve and become stronger.

• Project typology: a public garden around the villa of Constant Permeke, now the Permekemuseum

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