How to Build a Modernist Garden According to the "Mother" of the Genre

In 2010, author Conny den Hollander quit her job as a life insurance specialist and started her working life over again, deciding to do something she really enjoyed. After 25 years in insurance, she made the switch to garden trainee at the Mien Ruys Gardens in the Netherlands. A complete novice at the time, she found her way through asking questions, learning through trial and error, and literally getting her hands dirty.

Fast-forward several years, and Hollander’s hard work paid off. She became head gardener at the Mien Ruys Gardens and had fallen in love with the innovative style of the person whose gardens she was helping preserve: renowned Dutch landscape architect and "mother of the modernist garden," Mien Ruys.

During her 70 years creating gardens in Dedemsvaart, Netherlands, Ruys focused on incorporating into her designs minimalist, geometric shapes, and clean lines contrasted with simple plantings of perennials and lush vegetation. Through Ruys’s influence, this approach to gardening became the basis of the modernist garden aesthetic of the 20th century and onward.

"Mien Ruys was ahead of her time and who—as a woman—managed to become a respected and successful garden designer and landscape architect," Hollander says. Hollander’s admiration for Mien Ruys as the originator of the modernist garden led her to her book, The Gardens of Mien Ruys: Strong Design, Lush Planting, and the Origins of the Modernist Garden. "I never knew Mien Ruys personally," she says. "She had died by the time I became really entranced by her gardens." In order to create a complete portrait of Ruys, Hollander dug through the archives, poring over Ruys’s own books and publications, the video and audio recordings left of her, and the books and articles written about her life and work.

Buy the book

In the book, Hollander sheds light on Ruys as the person, pointing out how she democratized gardening, challenging elitist traditions that saw gardening open only to the upper classes. "Mien Ruys wanted to focus more on green spaces close to social housing and less on assignments for private gardens," she wrote. Typical modernist gardens lean into geometric shapes and clean lines. Over the course of her career, Ruys gravitated toward plain, streamlined design that seemed appropriate for the building and the surroundings she preferred to garden around.

Democratizing gardening is arguably something Hollander seeks to do as well. "Working and living in a green environment, with your hands in the soil is—for me at least—therapeutic," she says. And this should be open to everyone. To that end, we’ve tapped garden experts versed in modernist garden design to share how they cultivate the look in green spaces.

What defines a modernist garden?