Hedge Masters

The Wirtz family gardens are the stuff of landscaping legend. Beginning with patriarch Jacques Wirtz, establishing his own Antwerp-based firm in 1950 — the Wirtz sons would join in 1990 — their portfolio and legacy of monumental gardens now spans Western Europe and India.

You'll note they have a way with hedges:

Hedges used as boundaries, screens, textural planes, undulating forms, sculptural colossuses, metaphorical canvases, and whatever else suits them and the project. Elder Wirtz Jacques is known in particular for his use of evergreens and grasses.

The epitome of lushness, a Wirtz garden is loaded with texture and shape. They also tend to favor a limited palette. Eschewing flowers (for the most part, see an exception below) and other non-greenery. When the non-evergreens turn dormant brown in winter, it fits into the Wirtz master plan, as does autumn frost and winter snow. Their gardens are nothing if not monolithic-philiac.