As forerunners, the artists are already exploring the park of Soestdijk Palace

An exhibition shows how you can experience the romantic, 19th-century landscape garden when it reopens in 2025.

Hidden in the park of Paleis Soestdijk are a tennis court and a swimming pool. When they got engaged in 1937, Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard were given the sports pavilion as a gift from the Dutch school youth. But while the grass in the royal park is cut shorter than short, the tennis court is overgrown with flax, cornflowers and poppies. The referee’s chair is just visible.

Visual artist Zeger Reyers gives nature a helping hand. He restored the white lines of the tennis court and sowed flowering plants to create a maze. Here a new balance is formed between nature, culture and the history of this place.

It is exemplary of what is happening with Soestdijk Palace and the 165-hectare estate. Ton and Maya Meijer Bergmans, also owners of the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, are working on the redevelopment. ‘Made by Holland – Soestdijk Palace’ should open in 2025. ‘An inspiring platform for innovative and enterprising Netherlands’, according to the zoning plan, with exhibitions, lectures, conferences and education.

Until then, the park will remain closed, except for the summer exhibition precursors (in the weekend you can also visit the palace). Curator Marie Jeanne de Rooij selected ‘artists of today who color outside the lines in an innovative, curious, inquiring and experimenting way’. As forerunners, they are already exploring the park. They delve into nature and heritage and show how you can experience the romantic, 19th-century landscape garden in the future.

In a glass park house, Lennart Lahuis produces two lines of text in steam that immediately evaporate again: ‘Under the folded and baked earth where the coldest days are stored and buried.’ Ice blocks from the pond were once stored here in an ice cellar. On the edge of the pond itself is the ‘Borboros’ pavilion by Tilly Buij and Gerard Groenewoud. It is a water library with 1,800 jars of algae green or crystal clear water, from Loch Ness to the Princess Margriet Canal.

Ingrid Mol made a nostalgic and absurd diorama of the princess playhouse Ixientieta (the name is composed of the names Beatrix, Irene, Margriet and Christina). Juliana can be seen as a girl between Pinkeltje books, in middle age in the kitchen and as an elderly woman. As a voyeur you can look inside.

precursors provides a pleasant walk, both for the elderly who remember Soestdijk from the royal parades and for children who know it as the Grote Pietenhuis from the Sinterklaas news. It only gets grim in one place. A robotic arm from the car industry is chained in a shipping container right next to the palace. Bram Ellens’ ‘living’ robot actually seems to see right through you. Sometimes the robot is resigned, sometimes rebellious. As a spectator you hesitate between helping and moving on quickly.