This unique property comprises a scenic, woody terrain of over 60.000 hectares at the Utrecht Hill Ridge (Utrechtse Heuvelrug). The site is set high on the Amerongen-Mountain, allowing views that extend more than 60km to the next town. The clients’ wish is never to leave this paradisiacal setting. Therefore the landowners’ question to Wolterinck was to create an appropriate garden design naturally merging into its surrounding landscape, matching the new extension of the existing house with a strong inside-outside connection. A surprising but modest garden design that would logically fit the beautiful rural landscape and its views. As if the garden had always been this way.
Already in 2006 the client approached Wolterinck for a first design of an outbuilding in their garden. Over the years the design project grew out into an extensive project where Wolterinck (re)designed a large part of the property, including a Japanese tea-house with accompanying pergola till the recently added extension of the thatch-roofed house from 1903. The original minimalistic gardens by Jacques Wirtz have been added to by Wolterinck. Wolterinck respected Wirtz’ formal garden lay-out around the existing house, and added a natural-looking garden in the open sections further away from the house in 2012.
Starting close to the building. As the house was almost mirrored in architecture, Wolterinck did the same for the front garden. The addition was to blend seamlessly with the original garden in the front. The main paved path with clinkers continues in a straight line over the whole length of the house, accentuated by several spheres of Buxus and framed with structural hedgerows of beech. New beds of wild grasses and overwhelming flowers, including Echinacea, Veronica and Anemone, soften the edges of the new terrace. Wolterinck added rustic custom-made wooden fences at the entrances of the path protecting the delicate flowers from the abundance of rabbits in the sandhills.
As Wolterinck was also responsible for the design of the extension, there’s a strong connection between inside and outside. The garden room is surrounded by a slender pergola complete with glass roofing, creating a feeling of lightness and freeing the magnificent views. The double height space inside – divided by a glass door of 4.5 metres high- emphazises the view and the subsisting grown pinetrees, oaks and beeches. The paving of clinkers continues from the inside to the outside.
Moving further away from the building, the garden becomes more natural and organic towards the forest. The garden is in line with the earlier work done by Wolterinck in 2012. The open parts of the garden were transformed into an oasis of calm with a few trees and Rhododendrons in the field, in between ornamental grasses flowing in curved lines through the hilly terrain. Wolterinck did the same for the new adjacent terrain. Groups of evergreen Rhododendrons were replaced strategically to create a layered decor with tall trees and to camouflage fences of the nearby horse riding box. Organic groups of ornamental grasses were placed in between.
Architecture offices involved in the design: Wolterinck also designed the exterior and the interior of the extension of the house.
Project location: Amerongen, Netherlands
Design year: 2019 (other parts of the terrain by Wolterinck also in previous years)
Year Built: 2020 (other parts of the terrain by Wolterinck also in previous years)
