A Garden Like a Bouquet: Inside Marieke Nolsen’s Cutting-First Garden in the Netherlands

The useful part

Marieke and her family moved to the property in 2002 and transformed what had been a fairly simple garden of lawn, conifers, paving, and hedging. She designed the roughly 1,600-square-meter (about 17,200 square feet) property herself, dividing it into garden rooms with strong lines, paths, beech, and boxwood while filling the borders with perennials and shrubs. As a floral designer, she deliberately grows flowers, berries, and foliage she can use in natural arrangements, allowing her garden and floral work to overlap throughout the seasons.

How it works

• Pink hydrangeas mingle with plume poppy (Macleaya cordata, Zones 4–10) and globe thistle (Echinops cvs., Zones 3–8) in this border.
• She plans combinations with future bouquets in mind, grouping colors and flowers she knows will work well together.
• Her workshops incorporate seasonal plants into natural decorations for both inside and outside the home.
• In her workshops, she jokes about having a little "cutting fear" when the garden is looking especially good, because she doesn't want to disturb the display.
• The visit ends with Marieke demonstrating how garden-grown flowers, foliage, and other seasonal items come together in an arrangement.

What to take from it

This border captures Marieke's preference for weelderige, transparante borders —lush, airy plantings with a natural appearance. White blooms and seed heads rise through layers of foliage, while taller trees and shrubs give the planting its soft, billowing shape. Marieke stands among the layered plantings of her garden on Landgoed Den Treek-Henschoten.

Example or evidence

• Buy at Amazon Get our latest tips, how-to articles, and instructional videos sent to your inbox.
• How to Build a Fern Table The trend toward more naturalistic gardens is on the rise, but not everyone has the space for a wild meadow or expansive native borders.
• Hydrangeas are Marieke's favorite flower, and she cuts them freely throughout summer and fall for arrangements.
• Yellow wax-bells (Kirengeshoma palmata, Zones 5–8) add broad, maplelike foliage to the garden before their soft-yellow, nodding flowers appear in late summer and early fall.

Details worth keeping

After looking through these photos, it's easy to see why. This potting area is used to store pots through the winter and pot up seedlings for the garden. The small garden house was built by Marieke's husband, Martin.

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