Flow the Collection · 14 May 2026
The word says it: coulisses, stage wings. In a hedgerow landscape the wooded banks and copses stand like screens one behind another, so the land only opens once you walk on. Around Ootmarsum this landscape is still well preserved, and walking there almost naturally becomes a game of looking.
Made by people and time
The wooded banks did not appear by chance. Centuries ago farmers laid them out as boundaries between plots and as a source of wood. The higher, rounded fields are called essen; the lower, damp parts form the brook valleys. Together they give the land its rhythm of open and closed.
Layers that open up
Walk over the moraine, for instance from the Kuiperberg, and you see the layers most clearly: sharp close by, ever softer further off, until everything fades into a blue edge. In low light, early or late in the day, the wooded banks stand as dark stripes against the golden land.
The voice of the water
Between the banks the streams run: the Mosbeek, the Springendalsebeek, the Hazelbekke. They rise from clear springs and keep the valleys cool and green. Stand still and you hear the water constantly, a sound that is rare in the flat part of the Netherlands.
Experiencing it on foot
This landscape asks you to go slowly. Take a route that leads along sandy paths through the banks, pause at each view that opens up and let your pace drop to that of the land itself. From a hotel in Ootmarsum you have the hedgerow landscape literally outside the door.
If you want to set off at once, begin with the classic over the Kuiperberg into the Springendal: the route that shows the play of coulisses and springs at its finest.
