event

Open Garden Days 2024

Come and visit our beautiful canal garden during Open Garden Days 2024. Foam is happy to join this annual botanical event in Amsterdam, which opens a series of canal gardens, both private and institutional, to the public. Take this opportunity to enjoy our restored garden, normally not open to the public. The Foam Café will serve delicious coffee, tea and a variety of sweets.

Open Garden Days play a vital role in keeping historic gardens accessible. Grand old trees, rare plants, beautiful garden houses and both classic and newly landscaped gardens can be admired in the secluded plots, which are rarely, if ever, open to the public.

The garden of Foam

Behind the facades of Foam lies a charming city garden, which usually remains hidden from visitors and passers-by. The garden was designed in the early 1950s by none other than garden architect Mien Ruys (1904-1999). In 1993, Els Proost was asked to redesign the garden for the museum, then the Dutch Design Institute, so that it could be used for openings and exhibitions and to preserve the heritage for generations to come.

When Els Proost started working in the overgrown garden in 1994, she came across several still usable elements dating back to Ruys' design. Aware of the garden's special history and the legacy of Mien Ruys, Proost incorporated as many of these original elements as possible into her own design. As a homage to Ruys, she retained the elm on a rise and the two hedge blocks of holly.

Ruys played an extremely important role in Dutch garden design, while Proost’s design is very valuable in its own right. The lines in Proost’s design harmonise with the rear facades and open garden spaces. Her design was also geared toward receiving large groups of people, for instance at openings or for conferences, while visitors were meant to be able to move around and enjoy the monumental garden in every season of the year.

Het terras van Museum Fodor in 1972, een platform voor jonge Amsterdamse kunstenaars © Rob Croes, Anefo, Nationaal Archief.