Cantonspark Wintertuin (Winter Garden)

August Janssen (1865-1918), an Amsterdam businessman who had made his fortune in the Dutch East Indies and headed the firm Indische Cultuurondernemingen, bought part of the former Schoonoord estate in Baarn after 1902, where he already owned the villas Peking, Java and Canton. In 1914-1915 he had the Baarn architect G. Koelewijn build a heated glasshouse in which he could receive guests from the Indies among tropical plants, monkeys and exotic birds. A contemporary account praised it as a very large and exceptionally handsome palm house, fitted with central heating and electric light.

On Janssen's death in 1918 the estate passed to the Dutch State, which assigned it to Utrecht University. The park became the university's botanical garden, where the botanists Johanna Westerdijk, the first woman professor in the Netherlands, and August Adriaan Pulle worked. In 1931 the eastern part of the glasshouse was partitioned off for tropical plants, extra heating was installed and further tropical plants arrived from the De Duno estate at Doorwerth.

Once the university had concentrated its gardens at De Uithof, it disposed of the glasshouse in 1987, selling it to the municipality of Baarn for a symbolic guilder. Restored in 2012 with a State subsidy, it then housed a catering business with a butterfly garden (2013-2018) and, from 1 May 2019, the Wintertuin Experience, a tea garden combined with escape rooms. Closed to the public since 2023, it is due to reopen in spring 2027 as a meeting place devoted to plants.

The Wintertuin runs parallel to the Heemskerklaan along the northern edge of the park, on an almost rectangular plan measuring 41 by 25 metres overall. Its southern orientation was central to the design, giving the plants enough light and solar warmth even in winter.

The single-storey building combines timber and glass above a stone base; only the rear wall is built entirely of brick. The composition is symmetrical: a glazed central block about 13 metres high, its roof fitted with opening lights, is flanked by two lower wings of around 7.5 metres. To the east and west, two projecting bays of timber and glass with double doors originally held the entrances. The timber roof structure is braced with iron Polonceau trusses, and the glazed walls still keep some of their glazing bars, a few leaded panes and round-headed windows.

Inside, the building forms a single large space with a palm at its centre, while the sunken side wings are laid out as a promenade. The coal boiler and heating cellar, which stood outside the glasshouse, have gone. The building is a national monument (rijksmonument no. 511683), valued for its botanical history, its rarity and the quality of its construction.

From the outset Janssen filled the glasshouse with imported palms, bananas, coffee shrubs and other tropical trees, together with monkeys and exotic birds, so that his guests would find the atmosphere of the Indies recreated in Baarn.

Under Utrecht University the tropical collection was enlarged with economically important crops, notably bananas and coffee, and with a substantial collection of South American bromeliads. Tropical plants brought from the De Duno estate in 1931 added to the holdings, and the building remained a tropical plant house until 1987.

Later tenants changed its contents: a butterfly garden between 2013 and 2018, then a living green wall as part of the Wintertuin Experience. In the surrounding park several remarkable trees survive from the botanical era, among them a handkerchief tree, a swamp cypress and a giant sequoia, one of the tallest trees on the site.

The Wintertuin stands on the north side of the Cantonspark, a 3.5-hectare botanical park protected as a national monument, about fifteen minutes' walk from Baarn station. The park itself remains open, but the glasshouse has been closed to the public since 2023 pending the reopening announced for spring 2027; Open Monumentendag, the Dutch heritage days in September, has offered occasional access.

A walk round the park takes in its six other protected monuments: the colonnade bought at auction from the Oud-Roosenburgh estate in Amsterdam, the ladies' tennis house, the fountain, the statue of Cupid with a dolphin, the bridge and the cold frame (kweekbak), as well as the former head gardener's house.