Nightfall Brings a Dutch Urban Garden to Life

Nighttime transforms the landscape. Though we’re drawn to it, dusk usually signals that it’s time to go inside for the night. But in this backyard retreat, it’s at night when the garden comes alive — subtle movements are heard and seen, white blooms shine more brightly and garden scents linger.

Landscape designer Arjan Boekel was hired to transform an unused back patio in Amsterdam’s historic Canal Ring area for a working couple. They wanted an outdoor space to sit and relax in after work and on weekends. They needed a night garden, and in only two months of design and four days of construction, Boekel created something magical.

The clients wanted a garden, not just an outdoor extension of the house. Though this would be an outdoor area where they would entertain friends, grill and relax, soft greenery was a priority.

The existing outdoor space hardly resembled a yard, let alone a garden. A neighbor’s mature maple tree provided plenty of leaf litter, and pervasive ivy clambered through and over the walls. Let’s just say they started from scratch.


AFTER: “Making an outside living room is one thing, but I wanted it to have a real garden feel,” says Boekel. “Plants are the only distinctive elements to make a room a garden.” He planted half the available surface, creating two distinct areas: usable hardscape and lush greenery. “It creates a green buffer zone between the outside living room and the inside living room,” he says.

The homeowners also wanted more storage for garden tools and surfboards. Twining vines on the pergola and a green roof on the newly built garden shed augment the feeling of a garden, even in the built features.


The hardscaping is subtle — mostly wood and dark gray concrete tile. The built features of the garden frame and support the plants, without attracting too much attention to materials and design. Though the garden is relatively young, completed in the spring of 2012, we can already see where eager plantings will fill in and transform the space.

Visitors enter the garden from above, using an outdoor staircase off the living room. It’s from this angle that we see the charming new garden shed and its green roof. The garden is often enjoyed at night but also from inside and from above. The living roof is a welcome feature for the clients as well as for the neighbors.


A galvanized steel bridge floats over the plantings and small water feature to the covered seating area, traversing the green area without dividing it.

Buildings surround the yard on all sides. Boekel chose shade-friendly woodland plants, like ferns, anemones, hellebores, asters and Aruncus, that would tolerate the shadowy site, and that would also suit inexperienced gardeners who don’t want to spend all their time tending to plants.

A bright white anemone (Anemone × hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’) projects through the surrounding foliage. White flowers prevail in this garden, brightening even the darkest corners.


At just over 320 square feet, the garden features space-saving ideas, but perhaps not in the most literal sense. Composition is key. Everything fits together seamlessly, “placed and fitted together like pieces of a puzzle,” says Boekel. It’s more about getting the maximum use of the space by making sure the different elements of the garden work together and flow. A built-in table projects off the garden shed; the pergola is built into the shed on the other side.

The pergola works hard, and its multiple uses exemplify Boekel’s design mantra for the garden. It shelters the outdoor sofa, supports the climbing star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) and holds the outdoor lighting.

More: The 3 Ingredients of a Magical Night Garden

URL: Nightfall Brings a Dutch Urban Garden to Life http://www.decor-ideas.org/cases-view-id-22179.html