Adventures In Gardening

Arjan and Geertje van Dijk’s garden is vast and experimental, featuring everything from a canal, to ornamental beech arches, to a banana grove

- Romke Van De Kaa

Looking out from the living room window of Arjan and Geertje van Dijk’s house in the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant, you are treated to a panoramic view of what seems like two totally different gardens. Turn your gaze to the left and before you stretches a rectangular canal, flanked on both sides by almost symmetrical borders. Look instead towards the right and your eye is immediately drawn into a cherry orchard, bordered by a wave of hydrangeas, which in turn is echoed by a ripple of annual plants.

Delve further into the garden and you find even more distinct garden spaces: a grove of white-stemmed Betula utilis var. jacquemontii; a field of Hosta sieboldiana that takes on a warm parchment colour in the autumn sun, and is interplanted with Allium hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’, of which in late autumn only the skeletons remain. A circular pergola supports several gnarled wisterias and a sunken brick terrace gives an amazing view across a large meandering pond. The latest development is an amphitheatre of annuals in a raised bed, backed by a wall of Corten steel. It seems as if Arjan is experimenting with all available gardening styles.