MARY - Huize Weldam - Markelo - the Netherlands - Readable From Above on Waymarking.com

(This is the description of the gardens of Huize Weldam, that can be found on their website www.weldam.nl)

The province of Overijssel is rich in gardens of historical importance and the garden of Weldam Castle is an important example of this.

The historic Huize Weldam forms the core of the eponymous estate, of which the house, the original manor house and now Weldam Castle, is located in the center. The moated castle owes its present form mainly to a major renovation in the years 1644-1645, when the sixteenth-century rectangular building was provided with a classical front and two protruding gables.
Both houses were built at the end of the seventeenth century, the whole was enclosed in 1695 by two fence posts bearing the arms of different families. The most eye-catching weapon - an armored knight on horseback, brandishing a sword - belongs to the Ripperda family, the then residents of Weldam.

In 1879 the house was redecorated and the gardens laid out again by order of Maria Cornelia Baroness van Heeckeren van Wassenaer and her husband Willem Carel Philip Otto Count van Aldenburg-Bentinck and Waldeck-Limpurg.

After a plan had first been drawn up by the German landscape architect Eduard Petzold for the creation of a landscape-style garden, which was not carried out, the French landscape architect Edouard André in Paris was commissioned in 1885 to create a garden in a formal style within the canals around the house. lay. André left the implementation of the plan to his student Hugo A.C. Poortman. In the garden much use is made of boxwood and yew hedges, trimmed boxwood or yew trees, parterres de broderie and there is a berceau: shapes and plants that are reminiscent of the seventeenth-century gardens. In addition, there are also rhododendrons, roses, annuals and shrubs: popular plants in the second half of the nineteenth century. The garden of Weldam Castle is an example of a late nineteenth-century restoration of seventeenth-century Baroque gardens. This method of construction is sometimes referred to as "style mixedte" or neo-baroque.
Description garden:

The southern part at the front of the garden is completely symmetrical. To the left and right of the driveway, surrounded by young chestnuts, are the two sunken parterres with their graceful boxwood shapes. These parterres were greatly simplified after 1945. In the western parterre, orange trees stand in wooden tubs along one side of the elevated walkway that leads to the deciduous corridor. These orange trees are kept frost-free from October to mid-May in the orangery, which is located in the vegetable garden across the avenue. Few spaces are as inspiring as the 145-metre-long berceau of shorn beech (Fagus sylvatica), which is situated in such a way that during the morning side light falls through the high narrow gates, which are cut into the side wall. The incoming grazing light creates a play of light and dark. At the beginning and end of the berceau are coats of arms with the anchor cross of Bentinck and the year 1709, originating from the Diepenheim house, the home of the Bentinck family. The iron picket fence, over which the beech trees were once guided, was made in 1887 by the Gebr. Stork & Co. in Hengelo.

To the right of the deciduous corridor is the parterre de broderie. This French garden with boxwood foliage works especially well for a viewer from a high vantage point. After this you come to the maze. In 1999 this maze was re-established on the basis of the original design. The maze walls consist of thuja hedges. In the middle of the maze rises the wooden watchtower, from which one has a beautiful view over the entire garden layout. From here you also have a beautiful view of the castle with the square and octagonal tower, which were added to the house in 1898 and 1899. After the maze one comes to the path surrounded by carefully trimmed yew cones, sunken lawns and yew foliage. As was the case with the French garden, these laurels really come into their own when viewed from the castle. To the left of the path is a Pinus cembra supported by struts. This tree dates from 1840, so it predates the construction of the current garden. Behind the Pinus cembra is the playing field (tapis vert), surrounded by lime trees. This pasture is now the domain of sheep. After the rose garden, you enter the less formal part of the garden with ornamental shrubs, bulbous plants, etc. In the lawn against the canal, the name MARY is written in boxwood, after the first name of the Countess Bentinck mentioned earlier. This is where the private part of the garden begins, including the gazebo. This section is not open to the public. The garden is also closed on this side with a sunken parterre and instead of a berceau as along the left parterre, a beautiful perennial border has been laid out here.
(my own text)
The height of the letters is about 5 meters. Part of the letter Y is covered by the shadow of a tree. The gardens can be visited, tickets can be bought from the gardener. The part of the gardens with the letters MARY is a private garden, so you can't see the letters from the ground.

Coodinates for viewing from ground level: Not Listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   09/12/2023 PetjeOp visited it 03/02/2022 eilers1 visited it

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