Botanical garden "Heemtuin Hillegom"

At first, the secluded garden was a private estate of the wealthy Hillegom textile family Schulte Kuperjans. In the mid-eighties they sold the garden to the municipality. With the purchase of the heempark, the inhabitants of Hillegom got a beautiful back garden. 

With the acquisition of the heempark, the inhabitants of Hillegom got a splendid back garden. The botanical garden is largely a peat bog: trees are growing there which barely survive in the marshy soil, a layer of water floating on the groundwater. So you see a lot of strange monstrosities: lime trees that have sunk into the peat under their own weight, hornbeams that have succumbed to their heavy branches, an oak looking for a grip in the peat, a walnut, a birch and a hazelnut tree wriggling for support.
Nature takes its natural course in the Heemtuin. You see pink soapwort, primrose and witches' weed. There is also woodruff, with its shimmering white veil, the symbolic dress of Our Lady. For centuries, this plant has been used in the household for its sweet fragrance: between linen, as straw for cots, but also to season fruit wine. Willowherb with its magnificent purple-red panicles is also ubiquitous.
Once, when the Schulte family still owned the property, they built a lane leading to a teahouse which was never built. To the left and right, tall taxodies, exotics with roots anchored deep in the groundwater. They get their oxygen from aerial roots that pop up here and there between the mint, the yellow dead nettle and the wood anemone.
In the old orchard, there are still some old, high-piled fruit trees. Goudrenets and pears. On the bank of a mill ditch, along a field of purple cattails, the tall swan flower blooms with its reddish, triangular leaves.
A feast, the botanical garden of Hillegom. Feel free to sit on the bench along the ring canal, against the metre-high hedge of Japanese knotweed. Then you can look at Beinsdorp on the other side. No one will see you or disturb you: there's just no one else there.