Urban oasis

Tall cypresses (Cupressus sempervirens Stricta Group) add height to the garden and frame the view. Wisteria floribunda f. rosea ‘Hon-beni’ scrambles from the courtyard to the upper terrace that leads out from the kitchen and on up over the pergola on the roof above. It is complemented by Rosa ‘Madame Grégoire Staechelin’. On the roof above, the long trough is planted with two types of lilac-coloured Iris germanica, the cultivar names of which have been lost, interlaced with self-seeded grasses and a wild rose.

Enter through a bright-red door on an Antwerp street corner, and you pass through a passageway before encountering an enclosed courtyard garden that is an unexpected riot of cascading wisteria, climbing roses, tall cypresses and irises, with water tinkling in the background. “Some visitors say it’s like the South of France, while one journalist described it as ‘Little Italy,’” says its creator, Antoine Vandewoude. It could equally be said that the bonsai, ferns and acers give the space a Japanese feel. Not that Antoine cares much for labels. He is a self-taught carpenter, designer and maker who creates everything from furniture to entire interiors for his clients, including the Belgian fashion designer Dries van Noten. He has also recently discovered a talent for ceramics. Antoine is a self-taught gardener, too, and applies that same artistry and intuition to his outside space as he does to his interiors.

The garden is part of the live/work property that Antoine shares with his wife and two adult sons. Having searched for seven years for a property with outside space, they eventually found this rundown former sweet factory with a concrete-filled courtyard in the late 1990s. The property had such an unusual layout that they almost didn’t view it, but in the end they could see its potential.

Antoine spent a further seven years renovating the property before the family moved in. The living space is now on the first and second floors of the main building, above an office and storage area; the plant-filled kitchen flows out on to a terrace on pillars constructed by Antoine. Across the courtyard is Antoine’s workshop, with his ceramics studio above it. This leads out on to a verdant and unusual green roof, topped with a pergola.

Antoine quickly realised that the central courtyard was in danger of becoming a dumping ground from the renovatio