The view of the neighboring village houses, meanwhile, was obfuscated by the landscape architect Erik Dhont, who conceived a series of grandiose yew hedges punctuated with cypress trees in the Italian manner flanking a remarkable double-yew hedge laid out in an asymmetric zigzag formation, its borders now planted with day lilies, ferns, and hostas. Inspired by the gardens at Renishaw Hall, Van Noten recently planted fuchsia inside the yew, which now spurts drops of crimson from deep within the hedges’ green walls—which in turn lead to an enclosed garden of old-fashioned rosebushes and the picturesque nineteenth-century Swiss Cottage guesthouse of half-timbered brick and pebbledash. This house’s interiors have been evocatively arranged with the help of Van Noten’s friend Gert Voorjans, the gifted interior designer who also works on the brand’s store environments, which, with their soft furnishings, idiosyncratic antiques, and intriguing artworks, effectively conjure the convivial atmosphere of his houses.
Further gardens were to follow. In 2003, Piet Oudolf, whose subtly layered plantings of grasses and unusual shrubs give Manhattan’s High Line its shimmering magic, created a dark earth pathway that snakes through the property, with banks of thistles and echinacea Julia rising like steep heather moors on either side.
Van Noten ends his flower-gathering mission in the Rose Garden, which, in his country’s rain-sodden climate (and with the tender ministrations of the estate’s three full-time gardeners), has bloomed to opulent maturity in just three years. This new garden has been planned in classic English fashion with a large square acre divided into four quadrants, each providing a different atmosphere, and given further architectural form by eye-catching arrangements of handsome stone spires and Gothic elements salvaged from the fifteenth-century cathedral in Lier. Though one compartment here is planted with a precisely ordered battalion of apple and pear trees, the rest have the tumbling romance of the British gardens that Van Noten and Vangheluwe spend much of their rare free time exploring—enduring loves such as Sissinghurst, Great Dixter, and Hidcote, along with current passions including the stately Hardwick Hall, Rousham, and West Dean.