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before the gaze of the visitor. (The delightful pen and wash drawings of the Huygens family in Hofwijk’s shady groves, by Constantijn junior and others, date from the late 1660s, by which time the trees were well-established, as Huygens senior had hoped.)

In his poem, it is Hofwijk’s promise of future luxuriance that Huygens imagines with satisfaction and pride:

I want to show you Hofwijk, as if it sprang by night,

Grown sudden, like a mushroom, to maturity.

And more than this, I want to make us walk it round

As if our yesterday a century were past.17

A century on (in Huygens’s poetic imagination), the trees which in 1650 have not yet fully developed into their mature splendour have become the glory of Hofwijk – a medley of varieties, framing views, providing elegant markers along the walks and avenues, and bestowing their welcome shade on the summer visitor. Huygens’s poetic emphasis is one of pleasurable investment – storing up family emotional and commercial capital for the future. No man-made work of art will stand the test of time, according to Huygens: even a garden will eventually perish. His poem, though, will preserve the memory of its prime:

So frail are human works, paper outlasts them all,

Time wears the shrub and stone: in time it will be said,

‘Here once his Hofwijk stood, now rubble, weeds and spoil.’18

Still, insofar as the garden will outlast its creator, standing, it is to be hoped, for several generations thereafter, the trees in particular represent an enviable durability:

So the desire for tameness is answered by four rides

Of serviceable oaks, my avenues complete

In thickness at their root, in eminence in air,

For spread of branches round, for cool green murmuring.

Perhaps I called them timber: but let nobody dare

To break my faithful refuge, fell my avenues.

Think of invested gold, this planted capital

Matures in centuries; grandchildren, let them stand

And never burn the trees I planted for you here.19

Here, according to Huygens, is art and artistry that outdoes the creations of the painter or the tapestry-maker. He describes taking his ease among the splendid trees which have grown tall and proud, sheltered from sun and sharp winds alike, surrounded by family and friends, reflecting on the important issues in life and revelling in the time for thought afforded, away from his office:

Here I may laugh secure at sweat the mower sheds,

Here with my canopy of elmcloth over me.

My roof of leaves protects me from full moons

And from the scorching sun, and from the tears of heaven.

Here do I flee for refuge, sheltered here and cool,

I suffer without harm the rages of the skies.

Here is my pleasure, knowing how close my joy.20

As in Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Garden’ and ‘On Appleton House’ (written at roughly the same time as Huygens’s ‘Hofwijk’), the out-of-town garden estate is a refuge from care, a pastoral idyll. A gentleman’s garden is a paradise of calm and tranquillity, a place of consolidation and stability. There a man can reflect, can engage in reposeful conversation and reverie, alone or with friends. There too, urban pride, pomp and ceremony are transmuted into areas for modest recreation – shaded canals, limpid pools, green arbours – and simple foods are gathered from the kitchen garden (in his poem at least, Huygens shows comparatively little interest in ornamental flower gardens).

Hospitality is a recurrent theme in Huygens’s Hofwijk poem, as also throughout his prolific correspondence. He retains a particular place in his affection for garden-lovers like himself who have shared his enjoyment of his woods and walks: in 1680, when Huygens was an octogenarian, in a letter to the former English Ambassador to the Northern Netherlands and fellow gardener Sir William Temple, he refers to his old friend as ‘an ancient Hofwijkist’, a kindred spirit who has shared his garden pleasures over many years.21

Accordingly, making provision for the owner’s table, and for his guests, was one of the duties made explicit in the contracts of the gardeners who