These trees and shrubs are the Netherlands’ greatest work of art
Between 1946 and 1976, a group of passionate landscape designers drew up a green plan for the Netherlands. Landscape architect Henk van Blerck thinks it is our greatest national work of art, although hardly anyone knows about it.
There are trees and shrubs everywhere in the Dutch landscape. In beautiful rows along the road, around villages, like bushes in the landscape. Few people realize, or rather know, that all this together is our greatest national work of art. designed and built between 1946 and 1976.
“After the Second World War, our country was fitted with a tailor-made green suit,” says landscape architect Henk van Blerck, who obtained his PhD this year on the Dutch landscape plan at the University of Groningen.
“Before the Second World War, the countryside was often quite poor. Farmers had small, wet plots of land that were settled under water and unsuitable for modern agriculture. There weren’t many paved roads. In addition, the Netherlands must become self-sufficient, because such a Hunger Winter – never again.”
The land had to be redecorated. This was done through reparcelling: agricultural land was redistributed in order to be able to produce. Nature Conservancy, with people such as botanist Victor Westhoff, advocated that heritage and the characteristics of the varied Dutch landscape should be taken into account.
For example, enthusiastic designers from Staatsbosbeheer created plans for hundreds of land consolidations during the reconstruction period. And provided the landscape with new rows of trees, shrubs, yard plantings and hedgerows. They have now reached maturity and become iconic.
The millions of people, oaks, ash, birch and shrubs have therefore not been planted haphazardly, thought about it. Together they form one design that Van Blerck Landscape plan of the Netherlands calls. “Yes, in the French countryside too there are rows of trees and plantings along the road, around farms, but that has happened from incident to incident. Locally sounded.”
“Only in the Netherlands has the government taken national direction for the design of the landscape. I gave a lecture at an international conference, where colleagues were chatting their ears. Especially since the idea for this plan is almost eighty years old.”
Big delta
We are located in the southern part of the Gelderse Vallei, in the outlying area between Veenendaal and Wageningen. Van Blerck has drawings under his arm, and his voluminous book. “This was one of the first areas for which a landscape plan was drawn up. The trees and shrubs were planted here in the winter of 1948-1949. Like young blades, and now look.”
A proud, expansive demeanor follows. What is the essence of a certain area? That is what the club of Staatsbosbeheer wanted to express. The Netherlands is a delta with major differences, the historical landscape had to remain. In this place it was the transition from high and dry to low and wet. From the Utrechtse Heuvelrug, where people have always lived, to the low Gelderse Vallei, where cattle used to be excavated and nobody lived there.
Van Blerck unfolds the map and points to colorful felt-tip pen dots, shaped trees and shrubs: “That is reflected in the spaces between the plants. Near the moraine, the high part, everything is closer together. Towards the reclaimed area, with the stream De Grift running through the lowest part, the spaces between the greenery become increasingly larger. That is why you now have no view of the Veluwerand in the east and the Utrechtse Heuvelrug in the west.”
He points in amazement in the distance, to immediately tell that it was a huge renovation, the post-war land consolidation. The Netherlands had to modernize. Farms were built, larger plots, paved roads and the overall water management was improved. Many ditches, ditches, hedgerows and unpaved roads disappeared. However, ‘rooms’ with plants were also created at farms, intersections and villages to create a sense of security and offer protection.
Long ‘swinging screens’ of poplars and ash trees were planted in the river area. In Drenthe, the village greens and plantings were designed around the high-lying fields and along the stream valleys. Just like the dyke plantations in Zeeland and the creek plantations in the polders around the Biesbosch. “Together, they now form a tailor-made green suit for the Netherlands.”
Love story
We largely owe this green suit to Roelof Jan Benthem (1911-2003). He pulled the cart within Staatsbosbeheer. Purely out of love for the landscape, because the danger of land consolidation was a boring, monotonous polder landscape. Benthem was a surveyor and conservationist, with teacher and conservationist Jac. P. Thijsse as a great source of inspiration.
All his life he has searched for an optimal balance between nature, landscape and agriculture. Already during the war years he started drawing his plans. The first were carried out shortly afterwards. His assistants became Harry de Vroome and Nico de Jonge, later well-known names in supervision. They were very driven.
Culture and nature do not have to bite each other, that was the starting point. They have walked or cycled all the roads to draw their designs into the landscape on large planning maps. At Wageningen University & Research (WUR) there is currently a small exhibition with some of their oldest planning maps.
“At the opening I told a love story. Benthem’s sons still had photos from the past that I could use in my book. Spoken from those images so much love for nature. I saw him meeting friends in the field or birdwatching. And lying in the dunes with his betrothed, teasing through their binoculars. I was able to meet him a number of times, so I also know that the landscape really was his second great love.”
First village tour
Van Blerck can become emotional about the care with which they achieve their plans. From the loose notes in pencil on the maps, such as the circles with which Benthem wanted to indicate that a road would not just be issued straight. But that in some places, where the pencil circles are, there should be bends so that the road bends a bit with the historic landscape.
We are now inside, between the cards in the catacombs of the WUR, under the library. A selection of the old drawings hangs in display cases. All those landscape plans, after 1100, were kept in cupboards in the drawing room of Staatsbosbeheer, later they ended up here in Wageningen and were digitized.
Various supervisions of the current Wageningen Agricultural College developed useful, innovative knowledge. Van Blerck also consists of this in the fifties and eighties, worked for thirty years as an independent landscape architect and obtained his PhD without an appointment at the University of Groningen.
“These collection maps form the core of my research. It was a joy to reach them.” So here are some examples to show how detailed the makers went to work. He points to the 1948 map of Westerbork in Drenthe, on which the legend even indicates the planting distance, how deep to dig, a fen that preserves the vegetable garden. “And look at this dotted line: the first village trip in the Netherlands!”
He also points to the mound landscape in Groningen: “You don’t see any trees along the roads, nothing. De Vroome had all kinds of plants there to think of, but only the farms have some trees. When you drive on those roads now, you feel the vastness that was there when people lived here thousands of years ago, in the openness of the salt marshes.
The landscape plan for the area where we previously stood is also part of the exhibition. “We want people to find traces to discover that the plantings on that 74-year-old plan can now be found outside.” Certainly, new housing estates and industrial estates have been added, such as in Veenendaal, as a result of which meadows and fields sometimes disappeared. But the trees are often still standing. “In the built-up area of the municipality there are still alder canals, lindes and Swedish whitebeams: trees that Benthem had therefore specifically conceived there. My daughter lives in a new neighborhood and looks out at trees that are marked as dots on the map from 1948.”
New chapter
Yet there is also criticism of the inspired work: the old cultural landscape and the biodiversity of that time have largely disappeared. “Yes, the landscape has changed and much has been lost, which has unfortunately been exacerbated by the massive intensification of agriculture in recent decades. But these plans also did a lot of good during the reconstruction period. They give so much beauty now. So I want to nuance it. I would like to talk about the biography of the landscape. A new chapter was added to it, with its own beauty. And now we are again on the verge of major changes in the landscape.”
Hugo de Jonge, Minister of Housing and Spatial Planning, literally refers to ‘a major renovation’. In addition to sufficient sustainable and affordable homes and a switch to sustainable energy generation, he will make the transition to circular agriculture with a healthy and diverse nature.
Landscape plan of the Netherlands is not an end point, compared to Van Blerck, but a plan to build further. By storing fresh water in some places in the future, by planting more plants, creating more biodiversity and immediately giving space for hiking trails and detours.
“But one must be aware of the existence of Landscape plan of the Netherlands. It is our greatest national work of art, made with so much care. The green tailored suit may have to entertain her and her – widened or, on the contrary, hemmed – but the basis is there. Let us enthusiastically follow in Benthem’s footsteps.”
Henk van Blerck: Landscape plan of the Netherlands. Schokland and Water; 422 pp. €65.
Exhibition Dutch Landscape Designed: 1946 – 1954, at Wageningen University & Research, in building 102, Mon-Fri 9am-1pm (afternoon by appointment), until 3 March.
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