Guided tours of the French garden at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Namur
To mark the ‘Rendez-vous in the Gardens’ weekend, guided tours of the garden at the Musée des Arts décoratifs will be offered on Saturday and Sunday at 2pm and 4pm (duration 1 hour). A free educational leaflet for families is available for self-guided tours.
At the back of the former Hôtel de Groesbeeck, the garden of the Musée des Arts décoratifs was designed almost a century ago, in 1937, by Hector Mathieu. He designed four parterres of boxwood and pruned yew surrounding a pond, creating a symmetrical perspective reinforced by the 18th-century pavilion built at the back of the park. These elements are reminiscent of the principles of André Le Nôtre’s 17th-century French garden. Ancestral trellised lime trees define the composition. Within this regularity, a touch of English Romanticism appears thanks to a two-hundred-year-old tulip tree, a remarkable tree in Wallonia.
Following the restoration of the old hotel in 2016, the garden was renovated by the City’s Green Spaces Department (SNEV), which continues to maintain it. As originally, crushed brick has been spread between the boxwoods to accentuate the embroidery, and a collection of peonies has replaced the old diseased rosebushes.
Musée des Arts décoratifs de Namur - Hôtel de Groesbeeck - de Croix, Rue Joseph Saintraint, Namur, Belgique
https://www.namur.be/fr/loisirs/culture/musees/les-bateliers/musee-des-arts-decoratifs
