Hortus
My favorite garden in Europe after or alongside Vlinderhof is Hortus, the home garden and nursery of Peter Janke in Hilden, Germany, near Cologne. It’s great. It feaatures classic design elements but sometimes tweaked with more contemporary materials and a modern sense of balance. I find I can usually tell everything that’s happening in a formal garden with a single glance, but his garden is worth exploring. Nice plant combos and interesting contrasts between formal geometry and informal plantings. I took a lot of photos and could have easily taken more.
He spent time in England working with Beth Chatto and her influence shows in his dry garden plantings. I knew his work from a talk he gave at a Beth Chatto Symposium. It’s embedded at the end of the post.
The shade area has the same lushness and crisp foliage contrasts I found at Hermannshof 200km south. It’s the kind of rich green I see in gardens up in Oregon and Washington and only rarely in the Bay Area. I would love to grow Hostas so easily.
A lovely garden, worthwhile for anyone traveling to the area.
This entry was posted on Monday, December 2nd, 2019 at 7:16 pm and is filed under public gardens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
