Posts Tagged ‘Places to stay in Holland’

Last week I spent 3 amazing days in The Netherlands with some fellow UK based garden designers.  The trip was organised by Henk de Jong, Agricultural Counsellor at the Embassy of the Netherlands in London, and Andrew Fisher-Tomlin.

The purpose of the trip was to strengthen the knowledge exchange and trade between suppliers and garden and landscape architects in the UK and the Netherlands.

Over the three days we visited 9 nurseries and also spent a day in Rotterdam looking at designed public spaces and parks.  As you can imagine, there’s far too much to cover in one blog post so I plan to write three over the course of this week.

I wanted to start with Hotel Villa Augustus is Dordrecht, where we stayed for the duration of our trip.  We flew in last Tuesday evening as the remnants of Hurricane Gonzalo hit the UK and The Netherlands so it made for a rather bumpy flight.

And for those arriving from London Heathrow, a rather long journey as they were diverted to Brussels and didn’t arrive at the hotel until 2am on Wednesday morning.  Having to be up and on the coach for 8.30am didn’t make for such a welcome start so thank goodness for a good cup of coffee at each of our stops along the way that day!

The hotel itself was really quirky, a converted water tower with lots of character.  Each of the bedrooms is individual and really comfortable.  The garden is great there too and one of the reasons this was chosen as a base for our tour.  So I wanted to share the images I took of the garden.  The image above looks up to my room and balcony although I didn’t spend too much time sitting out there!

The Italian style garden at the entrance to the hotel was formal with a parterre and long rectangular pond which led down to the river Wantij. But there were some quirky and rustic elements too with rusty benches and this most amazing wall which was built using all manner of things.  It must have been really difficult to build.

As you walk round from the formal garden at the side there’s a gorgeous dining area.

And at the back, you’re led to a fully functioning kitchen garden which leads to the hotel restaurant.

Within the garden there are some bedrooms which open up on to the kitchen garden.  I took the final images at the back of them where was a gorgeous brick wall with fruit trees.

We all wished we’d had a bit more time to spend at the hotel – I’d love to go back sometime. The bedroom was fabulous – comfy bed and lots of character, great food in the restaurant (well for some of us who were lucky enough to arrive on Tuesday night!) and great surroundings too.

If you want more details of the hotel, you’ll find them on the Villa Augustus website.

(Images: Lisa Cox)