Evocation of an early seventeenth-century inner courtyard

Early seventeenth-century town garden, © KBC, Erwin Donvil Although there are no iconographic sources of what the inner garden originally looked like, we do have ample indications that Rockox had a model town garden. He bought his patrician residence in 1603 and the following year acquired the book Le théâtre d’agriculture by the architect Olivier de Serres, which includes guidelines for laying out a garden and the architect’s ground plans. These provided us with inspiration to evoke a historical town garden. 

In 1609 and 1610, Rockox received a delivery of plants, shrubs and saplings from the French humanist and botanist Nicolaas Claude Fabri de Peiresc. Thanks to surviving letters that accompanied the consignment, we know exactly which plant types Rockox received. Lastly, we still have the inventory that was drawn up following Nicolaas Rockox' death on 20 December 1640, in which is recorded that he had 2 bay and 10 orange trees overwintering in his cellars.

It was partly on the basis of these documents that, in the spring of 2002, the inner courtyard of the Rockox House was recreated as a model early seventeenth-century town garden.