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Chuse a Tree as big as your thigh, remove the earth from about him; cut through all the collateral Roots, till with a competent strength you can enforce him down upon one side, so as to come with your Axe at the taproot; cut that off, redress your Tree, and so let it stand cover’d about with the mould you loosen’d from it, till the next year, or longer if you think good; then take it up at a fit season; it will likely have drawn new tender Roots apt to take, and sufficient for the Tree, wheresoever you shall transplant him.

[…] A little before the hardest Frosts surprize you, make a square Trench about your Tree, at such distance from the Stem as you judge sufficient for the Root; dig this of competent depth, so as almost quite to undermine it; by placing blocks, and quarters of wood, to sustain the Earth; this done, cast in as much Water as may fill the Trench, or at least sufficiently wet it, unless the ground were very moist before. Thus let it stand, till some very hard Frost do bind it firmly to the Roots, and then convey it to the pit prepar’d for its new station; but in case the mould about it be so ponderous as not to be remov’d by an ordinary force; you may then raise it with a Crane or Pully hanging between a Triangle, which is made of three strong and tall Limbs united at the top, where a Pully is fastned, as the Cables are to be under the quarters which bear the earth about the Roots.33

In 1662 Sir Constantijn Huygens’s son Christiaan wrote to the newly established Royal Society in London, requesting a pre-publication copy of Evelyn’s Sylva for his father.34 By this time some of those precious saplings, lovingly planted in the 1630s, would have needed to be moved, to preserve the symmetry and perfect matching of trees which was an essential part of the garden’s original conception.

In ‘Hofwijk’, Constantijn Huygens urges his children and grandchildren to refrain from felling the trees that were his pride and joy, but still he refers to them as ‘invested gold’ and ‘planted capital’. Felling and transplantation were recognised advantages of extensive wooded estates – substantial trees might be dug up (with a large clod of earth attached) and moved to furnish more avenues, while trees thinned to keep coppices airy and suitable to walk in could be sold for commercial use.

I close this exploration of Constantijn Huygens’s beloved Hofwijk with a charming letter, written by the ageing diplomat to his friend Sir William Temple in 1676:

Be apprised of the fact that since some time ago the Hofwijck forest has been enlarged and beautified with four new shady avenues, and extended to impressive length, the result has been judged so beautiful and surprising, that those with most taste have concluded that it would be well worthwhile if the plenipotentiaries – both men and women – from Nijmeghen, instead of amusing themselves with trifles at Cleves, would abandon all matters of state there to come and admire Hofwijk’s magnificence … This forest has been decorated with numerous bowling balls, of such an exceptional size that they roll as if by themselve the length of these grand avenues, till they are lost from view, and quite otherwise than happens on the ‘bowling alleys’ and ‘bowling greens’ by the sea at Scheveling.35

Temple and his diplomatic colleagues should therefore rush to Hofwijk, concludes Huygens. And he signs himself off: ‘the Marquis of Hofwijk, gobbler up of British ducats [won] at the game of quilles, “penny wise and pound foolish”’.

The topographically demanding conditions for Low Countries gardening coloured, consciously or unconsciously, Dutch appreciation of gardens. Dutch travellers’ admiration was especially reserved for gardens that showed visible signs of a struggle between the aspirational owner and an unpromising location. We have a telling example of this during one of Constantijn Huygens senior’s early trips abroad, in spring 1620, when he was travelling as part of a diplomatic mission to Venice in the train of François van Aerssen,