The Faculty of Arts is the only faculty in the city center of Leuven that still has a lot of green surrounding it, thanks to herbal architect Jacques Wirtz, who kept the original vegetation when he designed the Erasmus gardens at the end of the 1970s. That is the reason why the garden is home to some valuable old trees, like the beech, the maple, the linden, the mulberry tree, the palm tree, next to bamboo, bridal flower, prunus and muscular bush. This adds to the charm of the Erasmus gardens.
The garden, sadly enough, lacks every sign to the faculty itself. None of the monuments points to the character of the faculty. The literary garden was created on the occasion of the centenary of the study of Germanic language and literature. The literary garden tries to enhance the relation between the Erasmus house and the Erasmus garden through poetry. A few trees and bushes received little plates with a poem which pertains to the plants. The ‘vegetale’ poems come from all over the Dutch literature, be it only in short fragments of the poems.
W. Smedts
14 March 1994
