Utrecht
Kasteel de Haar Castle Park & Gardens
Kasteel de Haar is surrounded by a monumental 135-acre park and formal garden ensemble created between 1892 and 1912 by landscape architect Henri Copijn and master architect Pierre Cuypers for Baron Etienne van Zuylen van Nijevelt and Baroness Hélène de Rothschild.
From the source
De Haar is a château at Utrecht, Utrecht, in the Netherlands. The recorded building campaigns date from the 14th, 15th, 16th, 19th and 20th centuries. Its architecture is recorded as Neo-Renaissance. The register records it as “rijksmonument”. Details are drawn from Rijksmonumentenregister.
Editorial reading
To create an instantaneous mature setting for the rebuilt Gothic Revival castle, landscape architect Henri Copijn undertook an engineering feat unprecedented in nineteenth-century Dutch horticulture: transplanting 7,000 mature forty-year-old oak, beech, and lime trees through the narrow streets of Utrecht by horse-drawn timber carriages. The estate layout masterfully contrasts French Neo-Renaissance formal gardens close to the castle with an expansive English landscape style pleasure park. The formal zone includes the Grand Canal, the French Rose Garden containing over 1,200 roses across 79 varieties, the Boxwood Maze, and the Roman Garden with its classical architectural ornaments. Surrounding the moated castle, Copijn sculpted sweeping water features, serpentine ponds, scenic wooden bridges, and undulating woodlands that frame dramatic perspectives of Cuypers's turrets and drawbridges. To realize this grand vision, the entire village of Haarzuilens was relocated one kilometre to the west. Protected as a national historic monument (Rijksmonument), Kasteel de Haar's park remains one of the largest and most complete turn-of-the-century designed landscapes in the Netherlands, combining Victorian botanical abundance with French parterre discipline.
Recommendation
Explore Henri Copijn's turn-of-the-century English landscape park, historic 1,200-bush rose parterre, and dramatic moated vistas framing the largest castle in the Netherlands.
Sources
The château by this garden
Discover the architecture and history of this place at Le Roi du Château.
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