Hi GPODers!
Today we’re taking a trip across the Atlantic to share photos from another garden we visited on our recent Fine Gardening tour of the Netherlands. This is the garden of Tom DeWitte, and it’s a beautiful example of the naturalistic, prairie inspired planting style that Dutch garden design is so well known for. Grasses, late season perennials, and self seeding wildflowers all mingle together in loose, textural drifts that feel more like a meadow than a traditional border. Here’s a look at what we saw.
The front of Tom’s property greets visitors with a relaxed, layered planting of ornamental grasses, flowering shrubs, and multistemmed birch trees. Even right up against the road, the garden reads as wild and unstructured in the best way, blending seamlessly into the surrounding farmland.
A close up reveals golden clematis (Clematis tangutica, Zones 4 to 9) in full bloom, its recurved yellow petals and dark, tufted seed heads adding a bright pop of color against the greenery. This vigorous, late blooming vine is a favorite for extending color into fall.
Tucked beside a charming outbuilding, this bed layers texture upon texture, with spent hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata sp. and cvs., Zones 3 to 8) blooms fading to a warm bronze, ferny foliage, and clouds of purple aster. The fluffy white seed heads scattered throughout add a whimsical, gone to seed quality that feels intentional rather than untidy. Pink Japanese anemone (Anemone hupehensis sp. and cvs., Zones 4 to 8) peeks in at the lower left.
A gravel path winds past a mounding clump of sedum (Hylotelephium sp., Zones 3 to 9) in full pink bloom, with fiery red persicaria (Persicaria amplexicaulis, Zones 4 to 8) glowing beside it. A simple seating area beneath a tree invites visitors to pause and take in the view over the adjacent farmland, a reminder that this garden sits right at the edge of open country.
Another path view shows off the garden’s late season palette in full swing. White Japanese anemones and purple asters line one side, while Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia, Zones 4 to 9) adds a haze of lavender blue on the other. The farm field beyond keeps the whole scene feeling connected to its rural setting rather than fenced off from it.
And what better way to end a garden visit than with good conversation? Two of our tour guests take a moment to relax beside the sedum and persicaria before continuing on. This kind of seating nook, tucked right into the planting rather than set apart from it, is one of the small details that made Tom’s garden so inviting.
Thanks for joining us on this quick tour of the Netherlands! If you’d like to see more from our garden travels, you can see other gardens from the tour here and here.
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