The Garden in Hune, also known as Anne Just’s Garden, is a truly a piece of art. Here you will find thematic gardens with colorful flowers in a beautifully architect-designed park.
“My whole life has been a love affair with flowers,” said Anne Just, the avid painter of plants and blossoms, who gave birth to her Garden at Hune.
A childhood brim full of flowers, her favorite motives when, bedecked in beret, her bicycle basket full of water colors, brushes and canvas, she would cycle out to the countryside around her childhood home in Kalvehave, in southern Zealand, Denmark.
Later she would travel the world, soaking up sights and skills with a sole goal: becoming a painter.
The garden of Anne Just – a painter’s garden, containing 5100 square meters of thematic gardens in hilly surroundings – was founded in 1991. At that time, the area was part of a great dune plantation; however, since then, the garden has constantly changed.
The southern section of the Rose House was constructed in 1993 and hedges planted, while the North Garden was planted and its elongated rainwater basin constructed the following year.
The house was built and the curved water basin between the pines was constructed in 1997.
And so it continues up until today, where you may experience the iris hill and the forest floor, The Olympic Garden, The Pastel Garden with a small pond, raised beds, a pavilion, The Yellow Garden containing pergola and a garden house. Furthermore, the three-towered pigs’ house as well as the drift tower for winter storage, The Palette Garden, Erik’s Garden, a coffee house, a pottery pavilion and the latest built garden motel.
In 2014 the Garden at Hune was selected for Phaidon’s The Gardener’s Garden, featuring the world’s 250 most beautiful gardens.
In her spare time Anne Just studied art history and cookery books. The latter with a passion that met the standards of professional gastronomy at gourmet restaurants, with or without French chefs and hand-painted menus, before winding her way surreptitiously, coming finally to settle at Hune.
Perhaps in was the Duck House that made the difference. In any event, the architect Claus Bonderup designed one for her when she lived at one point at the manor house at Skeelslund, west of Aalborg. The very same Duck House that today takes pride of place in the rainwater basin coiling around Iris Hill, at Hune.
Claus Bonderup has designed underground nightclubs along the Amazon in Brazil, planned fishing harbors on the Aleutian Islands off Canada’s west coast, catalogued historic buildings in northern Yemen, and secured international fame with his Arctic Centre, which, like a beacon in the Polar night, transforms Rovaniemi in northern Finland into a space utterly unique.
On top of all this, Claus Bonderup has to his credit several outstanding works within Danish architecture.
In 1972 Claus Bonderup came across a plot of land behind the dunes on the outskirts of Blokhus which would constitute the beginning of his comprehensive experiments with space, its form and its volume generated by pure geometry.
One fine day he met the colorful Anne Just, for whom he built a house for the ducks she reared in her park-like garden. Designed with a west-facing terrace it adhered rigorously to the rules of the golden section.
But then the ducks gained weight, obviously, and the door soon became too small! To make a long story very short, the ducks ended up on the dinner table, as Claus and Anne found love and each other.
Today, it all appears as one great theme park, supplemented with a shop, a painting exhibition, plant sales, book publications created by the flower artist Anne Just and the professor, designer and architect MAA, Claus Bonderup, in a unique symbiosis between his house and her garden. The Garden in Hune is visited by more than 20.000 people every year. A newly founded fund secures the future of the house and garden.
B&B for Garden Lovers, source: The Garden in Hune.
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