In a secluded corner along precarious stepping-stones of ancient masonry, a chaise longue in weatherproof material awaits a quiet moment. When rest is required, there is a pergola of wisteria with an oak table and chestnut bentwood chairs. Clipping them ramrod-straight by hand keeps the gardeners busy for two and a half months of the year. We dug up the yellow azaleas and massed them together on one side of the principal allée you see from the castle, and put the others-the lilac-colored Rhododendron ponticum and associated forms-around the ponds on the opposite side.” To supply a horizon against which the now-huge shapes of the rhododendrons register like a Zen garden on the grandest scale, he planted a mile of trees and hedges that have reached a vast height. When we arrived they were all muddled up, which was too much. Guided by his directions on the cell phone, I meander through the history of the grounds, walking through clouds of rhododendrons and azaleas. Vervoordt has lived at the castle long enough to see the park and gardens, planned with the famous Belgian designer Jacques Wirtz, reach maturity, which he observes from his horse on daily rides.
So it makes sense that the latest addition to his garden is designed to minimize human intervention and take on a wild life of its own. “I am in a conversation with nature, but I am aware that nature should always have the last word,” he says on the phone from Venice, a place he loves and to which (unlike most of us) he has managed to give something back, as we shall see. His approach is to stand back in equal proportion to being hands-on, exposing materials to the elements and allowing the eye to rest peacefully on the results, just as vines and wisteria in gardens and on terraces clamber to erase his touch. Signature Vervoordt gestures-indigo, putty- and rose-colored linens tables stretched out long a huge branch of a flowering tree in a metal tub found on the street walls washed with pigments dug from the ground and hung with masterpieces by, say, Fontana, Twombly, Kiefer, and Kapoor-have inspired a generation and been copied from Beirut to Kensington. Vervoordt, whose clients include Robert De Niro, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Sting, and Calvin Klein, has perfected the ability to create environments that look found, not made. As you approach, the silence is defined by the sound of horses quietly grazing outside the garden.
No surprise, then, that one of the keenest eyes in the world snapped up the sleeping twelfth-century castle, set in its 62-acre park and ponds, in the 1980s, when nobody much was looking at this Belgian backwater. It turns out that Mondrian was inspired by this landscape in 1911 to make his first abstract paintings.
AXEL VERVOORDT TIMELESS INTERIORS PAPERBACK PATCH
Beyond it lie the straight roads, canals, and plantations that patch the flat land like a rustic Mondrian for the few brief miles it takes to get from here to Antwerp. From this island tower Axel Vervoordt has masterminded his extraordinary art-and-design empire, creating some of the most elegant interiors of the past 30 years. With his incomparable eye and keen sense of beauty, renowned interior designer Axel Vervoordt draws inspiration from the magical gardens of his Belgian castle.ĭown a lean avenue of beech trees dressed in the modesty of their first green stands the faded Kasteel van ’s-Gravenwezel beyond its moat. Once formally designed along geometric lines, the new prairie garden at Kasteel van ’s-Gravenwezel has been encouraged to run wild in colors borrowed from Axel and May Vervoordt’s favorite Abstract Expressionist paintings.
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