Jan van der Groen, hovenier van de Prins van Oranje. Nieuwe archiefgegevens over zijn leven

Jan van der Groen, noted for his 1669 gardener’s handbook Den Nederlandtsen Hovenier, was a Hague florist and gardener to the Prince of Orange. His father Warnart was a broom maker with a sideline growing flowers, bulbs and unusual plants, which he also supplied to the stadholder’s gardens. Jan grew up in The Hague and married into a family of stadholder gardeners. In the clientelistic culture of the seventeenth century he, like the other gardeners to the prince, owed his appointment as head gardener of the gardens ‘op de Cingel’ in 1662 to his and his wife’s families’ service to the court. The modest gardens ‘op de Cingel’ were located next to the Binnenhof in The Hague, on the site of Prince Maurits’s former Buitenhoftuin. Van der Groen was tasked with managing these gardens and laying them out with parterres and a planting of fruit and citrus trees, to a design by the architect Pieter Post. It was in his gardener’s dwelling on the Singel, that Van der Groen wrote his famous reference work. Following its publication, Van der Groen was transferred in 1670 to the large and prestigious gardens of Huis Honselaarsdijk, where his task was largely supervisory. His stay there was brief, for in 1671 he was appointed, for unspecified reasons, head gardener of Huis ter Nieuburg near Rijswijk. He died here, in his gardener’s dwelling, on 21 November 1671. Jan van der Groen was something of an odd man out among the gardeners. Having started out as a florist, he would seem to have had no experience in garden management when he was appointed head gardener. Most other gardeners had worked in the job from an early age, thereby building a wider range of horticultural skills and knowledge. It is also probable that he had little or no knowledge of geometry at a time when gardeners were increasingly being required to lay out classical gardens. On the other hand, in addition to his considerable knowledge of flowers and plants, Van der Groen was acquainted with prevailing views on ‘outdoor life’; he was familiar with the foremost gardens in France and the Dutch Republic, either from illustrations or possibly even from personal experience. In this he probably differed from other gardeners. Van der Groen did not make any garden designs. His social position was comparable to that of other gardeners: they belonged to the petit bourgeoisie, a social middle class with a modicum of property, which fell between the small, wealthy upper class and the vast mass of poor people. Nor was there any difference in terms of the subordinate position within the stadholder household and the garden management organization. All gardeners were required to render detailed accounts to the Nassause Domeinraad, the body responsible for managing the Prince of Orange’s domains. Ultimately, it was the publication of his book that set Van der Groen apart from his peers. No other court gardener ever penned such a work