Vijversburg Orangery (cactus house)

The Vijversburg estate belonged to the merchant Age Looxma, whose only child, Baudina, married the physician Nicolaas Ypey. From 1844 Ypey had the estate's neoclassical villa built. In 1850 the eastern ruins of the neighbouring Toutenburg castle were bought and pulled down.

The orangery belongs to this phase of improvements, at least according to the national survey of historic glasshouses, Kassen in Nederland: it dates the building to around 1845 and tentatively credits it to the landscape architect Lucas Pieters Roodbaard, who was then reshaping part of the park in the landscape style. The national heritage register, however, assigns the brick base and rear wall to the 18th century, so the two sources disagree on the building's origins.

In 1892 the couple's only son, Age Looxma Ypey, died unmarried; his will created the Op Toutenburg foundation in memory of his mother, and it has run the villa and park ever since. From 1894 the garden designer G. Vlaskamp also worked at Vijversburg. At a later date the orangery's original glass roof was replaced by a modern one. Between 2014 and 2017 the park was enlarged to about thirty hectares, with work by LOLA Landscape Architects and Piet Oudolf and a glass pavilion by Junya Ishigami; the orangery now serves as the park's cactus house.

The Vijversburg orangery belongs to a hybrid type that the survey Kassen in Nederland calls an oranjeriekas, or orangery-greenhouse: a building that is an orangery in its masonry and a greenhouse in its glass roof. The authors observe that its profile recalls a greenhouse with an asymmetrical roof, and that the same structure is sometimes labelled an orangery and sometimes a glasshouse.

Built of red handmade bricks on a rectangular plan, it rests against a brick rear wall and is covered by a fully glazed pitched roof with unequal slopes. Inside, it is divided into two compartments of nine and ten bays. As is typical of the type, the entrance is a pair of doors in the left-hand end wall rather than a row of doors along the front. Facing south-west, the building lines the kidney-shaped kitchen garden and is woven into the layout of the landscape park. The present glazing is modern: it replaced the original glazed frames, and its bay divisions no longer match the old ones. The building is protected as a national monument (rijksmonument no. 409351).

The orangery is looked after by volunteers of Succulenta Fryslân, a Frisian group of cactus and succulent enthusiasts. They grow a collection that ranges from tiny globular cacti to tall columnar specimens, and also tend the adjoining rock garden. The building has not entirely given up its original role either: Kassen in Nederland notes that it is also used to overwinter various tub plants.

The collection has its high points. In July 2021 a cactus known in Dutch as the schoonmoedersstoel, or mother-in-law's seat, flowered there after some thirty years of waiting, and the house, reopened to the public on 11 July, allowed visitors to see it in bloom. An annual cactus day, held on 24 May in its 2025 edition, offers guided tours, sales of unusual plants and cuttings, and advice on cultivation and propagation.

The orangery stands in the historic part of Vijversburg park at Tytsjerk, on the edge of the former kitchen garden. The cactus house opens only in summer, on Sunday afternoons from May to 1 September; groups can arrange a visit by appointment outside those times.

The park charges an entrance fee. Its thirty or so hectares warrant half a day: combine the orangery with the villa and its tea room, the glass pavilion designed by Junya Ishigami with Studio MAKS, the Piet Oudolf gardens, the winding ponds and the many stork nests. The annual cactus day in May is the best time to benefit from the volunteers' explanations.