Thijsse Hof

J P Thijsse (see biographical note) was a pioneer of plant ecology and of using native plants in parks and gardens. The design idea is modernist and functionalist.  Thijsse's own house is beautifully at home in the natural landscape, which is on the fringe of Northern Europe's greatest area of estuarine wetland. There are areas of water, woodland, heath and cereals, with the wild flowers labeled. The Thijsse Hof garden it is half a away from his house, on the edge of coastal dunes and wetland. It was given to Thijsse as a birthday present in 1925. He used it as an 'instructural garden' and asked Leonard Springer (a famous Dutch landscape architect: 1855–1940) to layout the path structure. Kees Sipkes, 1895-1989, the owner of a wildplant nursery, helped Thijsse with the construction of Thijsse's Hof. There is a garden by Sipkes: Tenellaplas, Zuidhollandslandschap.  Thijsse created a biotope in Thijsse's Hof to show the beauty of all the wild flowers from Kennemerland. The size is less than 2 ha but more than 900 schoolchildren (7/8 yr.) visit Thijsse's Hof every season for 'nature-lessons'.