500 Species, 5,000 Tulips: Inside Antwerp's Hidden Church Garden

Some 500 plant species, 5,000 tulips and 2,000 bulbous flowering plants grow inside a walled 4,800-square-foot garden in central Antwerp—and most passersby have no idea it exists.

The garden, called Hortus Conclusus after the Latin for enclosed garden, belongs to St. George's Church (Sint-Joriskerk) on Mechelseplein, a quiet street around the corner from a lively square. Ronald van der Hilst, a Dutch landscape architect and designer, has cared for it since 2018, when the clergy—his neighbors—offered him what he calls a "godsend of an opportunity." The congregation no longer used the plot; by then it was more burden than blessing.

Van der Hilst accepted on one condition: freedom. He got carte blanche. He began writing, in his words, a story that blooms all year.

Who is the gardener behind the wall?

Van der Hilst lives in a renovated 19th-century coachman's house directly across the street. He has gardened since childhood and kept a personal garden outside Antwerp for several years before taking on Hortus Conclusus.

"I simply need hands-on contact with plants and the soil—to witness what the seasons bring and be connected to what lives and decays," he says.

He grew up in Bennekom, in the Netherlands, near a spot that shaped him. "There was a place in the nearby woods that always left a magical and fascinating impression on me—a clearing where someone maintained a vegetable garden," he recalls. "I never saw the person, but it had something surreal about it: a garden right in the middle of nature, a world unto itself." Hortus Conclusus is not unlike it.

What does the garden contain?

The design layers art and history rather than symmetry. There are no ordered beds. Van der Hilst planted most specimens individually instead of in collections to show nature's diverse richness.

• A single olive tree at the center, a symbol of peace and longevity
• Tall cypresses along the perimeter wall, which he says embody the connection between earth and heaven, referring to the enclosed garden described in the Song of Songs
• A small water basin symbolizing the source of life
• A continuous path echoing monastic walks of contemplation

"Through this individual planting," he says, "I can maximize the variety of species, textures, colors, flowering periods, and foliage contrasts, while simultaneously fitting my use of the garden as a plant lab."

Can the public visit?

Rarely for a van der Hilst garden—known for tulip history and rare bulb cultivation—this one opens its gates. "It's the first garden I've designed that I can occasionally open to the public," he says. Visitors can come by appointment, through word of mouth, or during open garden days, drawing hundreds, sometimes thousands, per season. Lucky ones get tea brewed with homegrown herbs, served in porcelain van der Hilst made himself.

The paradox—private yet public, hidden yet accessible—mirrors Antwerp itself, a city whose richness lives largely behind closed doors.

"This garden means the world to me: It grounds me to this specific place, making me feel as though I have finally achieved a sense of completeness," he says. "It gives me immense satisfaction to see how I have managed to bring a place in the city back to life, turning it into a true oasis within the desert of the urban context."

He aims higher than most gardeners. "I strive—and succeed—to have flowers in the garden every single day of the year, thereby giving it an aesthetic appeal even in winter."

Van der Hilst has called Antwerp home since the early 1990s. The garden he revived across the street now does what enclosed gardens have done since the monasteries: it keeps the world out and opens vertically toward the sky.