Portrait of us in the garden in Gouda, painted by Mary Grooteman
Martin is a keen gardener. In our first house together, in Gouda, we started with bare earth and weeds. He made a design for the garden and over the next twelve years, developed it into a space that had terraces and lawn, borders, trees and shrubs. It was only small, but it gave us a lot of satisfaction.
Now that we’re at De Witte Wand, he’s able to follow his passion on a much bigger canvas. We have 7,425 m2 or nearly two acres to deal with here. About half of that has been left as an open field, the rest of the plot around the house has been developed as gardens.
We have two ponds, one at the entrance side of the house and one at the back. These were originally developed by the previous owners. We’ve left the one at the front more or less unchanged, but have had the one at the back redeveloped into a formal pond with a terrace at the side.
Martin has a fondness for Hostas, and he has over 35 different varieties in the garden.
Summer or Winter, the garden always has something to make it worthwhile…
You can find lots more photos of the garden at De Witte Wand up on Flickr here.
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