Life, with the garden
Location: Rotterdam, the Netherlands • • • Visits: March 2024
It is very Dutch. Flat, dense, and traversed by multiple small canals. But also: Full of birdsong. Coots, black against the murky canal water, paddling with their over-sized feet above leisurely swimming koi fish. It is the time of spring just before the leaves open, but the magnolias are in full bloom. This strange tree, voluptuous beyond reason in the otherwise shy early spring.
It is densely planted, the small garden, with small nooks of plants, enough evergreens to create lushness even with most leaves still budding. Statues everywhere, both beautiful and strange. It is pleasing. Despite the garden being small and most plants having not woken up from their winter slumber yet, there is still so much to see.
The year, still young enough so that the sun falls at an angle, painting silhouettes around the bare trees.
And something about the contrast: The Rotterdam I have been walking through is so hard, extensive, experimental, surprising, concrete and unexpected angles. I have really been enjoying the architecture, its brutality, been fascinated. But there is nothing organic about it.
Whereas here: A classical, stylish, meticulously and harmoniously planned garden. Aged, and well cared for, is the feeling that springs from the flower beds. So different from the hardness of the city outside.
And the birdsong. Ever-present. Like the birds have all had to gather in this little dense piece of greenery, in the middle of the concrete jungle that is Rotterdam.
Katja Malmborg 