Garden Visit: Piet Oudolf in Quiet Menorca

Just across the Balearic Sea from Barcelona, the small island of Menorca is perpetually confused with Mallorca. No one’s complaining; unlike Mallorca and Ibiza, Menorca is not high-profile, but it makes a good living from tourism. With a port that is the second deepest in the world, the island has attracted invaders and visitors for thousands of years but has somehow stayed more or less the same, aided by its UNESCO biosphere status. It should have come as no surprise when international gallerists Hauser & Wirth set their sights on Mahón harbor, promising a garden by Dutch superstar Piet Oudolf, a restaurant, and a world-class art gallery. But would these estrangers understand what makes Menorca special?

Photography by Kendra Wilson and Jim Powell.

First off, the restoration of the buildings, part of a larger site on a harbor island used as a British naval hospital in the 18th century, is wonderful. Menorca is blessed with luminous marés limestone, used on older buildings in the matter-of-fact manner of cinder blocks. The intention of architect Luis Laplace was to make some clarity in his restoration of the buildings, retaining the scars of what went before.

A little bit of glamor in Menorca goes a long way; it is not naturally receptive. But the restaurant at Hauser & Wirth Menorca, called Cantina, has a celebratory quality. Set outdoors in a remnant bosco of slim olive trees, the combination of showmanship and food to write home about is a great success.

Luis Laplace worked with Hauser & Wirth on their British gallery in Somerset, and his work here is part of a wider creative reprise that includes Piet Oudolf. H&W caused a sensation when they hired Piet Oudolf to design the gallery garden in what was once a quiet English county. There has been a tendency in the last decades to jet-wash whatever it was that was appealing to start with, but Oudolf Field is in a league of its own, a showcase of prairie planting with a global renown that arguably outshines the gallery.

Menorca is an island of lizards and tortoises, and at Hauser & Wirth Menorca the lizards of Isla del Rey are provided with Helicodiceros muscivorus for food. It’s not the most attractive plant and is tucked away from the more showy staging of this garden. Likewise Phlomis italica, also known as Balearic Island sage, is less in evidence, if it is planted at all, than the non-native yellow Phlomis fruticosa shown here.

Oudolf worked with Menorcan landscape designer Alvaro de la Rosa Maura, who sourced plants with the help of local nursery Horticola Balear. Oudolf’s work is truly international, but as with garden consultants who fly around the world or travel between states, one can’t help wondering if there was a lack of local talent. Fernando Caruncho, for one, has made heart-stoppingly beautiful private gardens on these islands, which are recognizably of this place.

If the garden, which mainly fringes H&W’s nucleus of buildings, had been more about this specific Balearic island and less of a living art installation, there would be many more pine trees and figs (although a fig tree is beautifully framed by the gallery’s concrete walls), as well as thorny maquis, the default shrubby profile that is seen everywhere — and which is happy to be manipulated for garden purposes. In the end, it is the work of more visitors, and Menorquíns, it is safe to say, will carry on regardless. In the words of an old friend who has known the island well for six decades: “Menorca refuses to be impressed by money.”

See also:

• Menorcan Muse: Lessons from the Labyrinth in an Ancient Quarry
• Designer Visit: Piet Oudolf’s Otherworldly Garden at Hauser & Wirth Somerset