The garden of the late, great landscape architect Jacques Wirtz, which is more than 50 years old, is now being renewed by his children
WORDS CHRIS YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHS RICHARD BLOOM
All gardens change, whether day to day, year by year or, if you’re really lucky, decade by decade. But how do you deal with a garden that your notable landscape architect father made? And in a garden that is as iconic as it is deeply personal?
These conundrums are what Martin Wirtz, his brother and business partner Peter, and their two siblings are now facing. Martin and Peter head up Wirtz International, the design practice founded by their late father Jacques Wirtz, the leading Belgian landscape architect who made us look at form and structure – and the spaces in between – with fresh eyes from the 1980s onwards. The design practice he founded has become synonymous with hedges, curved lines and a restrained colour palette. Think of the clean lines of Alnwick Castle’s garden in Northumberland, or the much-photographed box balls and clipped topiary that give structure to many of its private and public gardens.
Yet it is perhaps the private garden of Jacques and his late wife Wilhelmina that is visually and intrinsically connected to the public perception of the Wirtz brand. But for Martin and his siblings, it was simply home. “The six of us moved into the house in 1970 and it was hugely exciting, as it needed completely renovating and there was always something going on.”
The house and associated barn became the nucleus of the Wirtz world, with the landscape design and construction business working from the barns. The garden became a utility area, always housing plants for commercial schemes and acting as a storage facility, the plants constantly changing. “Growing up, I loved the connection with the firm – every season plants were different, always being moved around and giving the garden a different feel.”
As you would expect for a Wirtz scheme, even at home the structure was key. But not because of the clipped hedges. “The most important part of this garden is the cross section axis that runs down the garden, which gets enhanced by lawns, fruit trees, hedging and other shrubs,” explains Martin.
The house and gardens, which are near a local castle in Schoten, north of Antwerp, were originally owned by a farmer and contained plenty of overgrown or badly clipped (or nearly dead) Buxus trees. “When my father bought the place, he came in and when most people would have thought of getting rid of the b
