This exhibition lets visitors explore local seventeenth-century garden culture while reflecting on their own ideas about the garden and landscape today. One of the first Dutch 'garden poems' - the so-called 'hofdichten' - serves as a starting point. In ‘De Moufe-schans’ (1621), Petrus Hondius describes his search for a life in the garden to escape the hustle and bustle of the city. He not only paints a unique picture of rich garden life in the 17th century, his work also offers a guide for reflection on our activity in the garden today. The poem is an ideal starting point for translating the preliminary results of the PhD research project 'Gardens of fear and fame' (Caroline Baetens) to a wider audience. In this project, the 17th-century garden serves as an example of both human engagement with nature and the felt need to control and instrumentalise it, based on human needs.