Mien Ruys, Garden and Landscape Architect

Phase I: Accessibility and Documentation of Archives 

Project Report

Organization: Buro Mien Ruys, Garden and Landscape Architects bv
Amstel 157, 1018 ER Amsterdam
+31 (0)20 622 58 73 | buro@mienruys.nl | www.mienruys.nl/buro/index.html

Contact/Author: drs L.D. den Dulk
Bakenessergracht 71-C, 2011 JT Haarlem
+31 (0)23 545 85 05 | leodendulk@cantua.nl

Location of archives: Library of Wageningen University and Research Centre
Dept. Special Collections
Database TuiN: www.library.wur.nl/tuin/

Project period: 01-09-2003 - 31-08-2005

CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. Progress report (Newsletters)

3. Protocol for selection and documentation

4. Gardens, Projects and Documents: Statistics

1. Introduction

This is the final report of the project called Mien Ruys, Garden and Landscape Architect, Phase I: Accessibility and documentation of archives .

Project data

This project was set up and implemented by L.D. den Dulk, with the assistance of A. Dijkstra (scientific documentalist, Dept. of Special Collections, Library of Wageningen UR) during data entry in the TuiN database and of H.Veldhoen (garden and landscape architect, Buro Mien Ruys, Amsterdam) for data verification.
The scheduled starting date was moved from July 1, 2003 to September 1, 2003. The final date was August 31, 2005. A progress report, based on previously distributed Newsletters, has been added as 2. Progress Report.

Goals achieved

This project's first goal, the safeguarding of the Mien Ruys archives, has been achieved. It includes the transfer to the library of Wageningen UR of the material in the collections of the History Centre of Overijssel Province in Zwolle. All documents are now stored in the archive rooms of the department of Special Collections, Wageningen UR Library.
The selection and documentation of the material was based upon the protocol added as 3. Protocol for selection and Documentation.
The second goal, the preparation of a List of Works comprising all of Mien Ruys' documented works in the period of 1925-1995, has been achieved as well. This List of Works will not be available as a separate document, but users may refer to TuiN database which will be online shortly.

Data input and project presentation

The material in the archives has been made accessible by the input of the documentation data into TuiN database. It contains records on a number of garden and landscape architects' archives which are part of Special Collections.
The database is organized in three tiers: Garden, Project and Document. Statistics about these records may be found in the chapter  4. Gardens, Projects and Documents: Statistics. Presently, TuiN database contains all of the Garden and Project records, but the input of data in the Document records is ongoing. As part of the documentation, scans made of a selection of plans and a number of pictures will be added to the Document layer. The results of the project will be presented to the public shortly.

Second Phase: Biography

As described in the original project proposal, during the first phase of the Mien Ruys project material has been collected that may serve as part of the second phase of the project, i.e. the preparation of a manuscript for the biography of Mien Ruys.

2. Progress report

This chapter is based on the Newsletters that have previously been distributed.

Transference of the material
The files of Mien Ruys were until the fall of 2003 stored in the attic of her summer house on the grounds of her Trial Gardens at Dedemsvaart. This actually is the former pigsty on the Moerheim property, transformed by Ben Merkelbach - one of the famous Dutch Modernist architects with whom Ruys cooperated closely since the early nineteen-forties - into her summer residence. It was not an ideal place for storing paper: humidity, heat and cold, mice and other creatures did not improve its condition. As soon as this was noted in the initial stages of this study, the transference of the material to a safer place and the creation of some degree of accessibility was taken on as a necessary first step towards conservation.

The contents of some 120 removal boxes full of paper were moved to the premises of  Wageningen UR Library. At the moment it is still located at the  Jan Kopshuis, Generaal Foulkesweg 19, where the collection is stored in buffered boxes and acid-free folders until the library moves to a new building in 2007.

Accessibility
Fortunately, Mien Ruys and her staff provided the file envelopes in the removal boxes rather consistently with project numbers. Of the card index box in which these numbers were recorded, an Excel spreadsheet was made not so long ago.
In this way it has been possible for external researchers to consult the files when the author was present. Several persons have done so over the last two years.

Selection
Before the documents were filed, a first selection was applied: all projects for which it was obvious that Mien Ruys had no involvement in were put aside, usually being designs or planting schemes that were made independently by one or more of her staff. The final selection contained in approximately 70 removal boxes was made with the assistance of senior Buro Mien Ruys staff member Hans Veldhoen.
At an early stage of this study some interesting facts were found, e.g. material predating 1960, which was known to be destroyed for a large part, turning up in later projects for the same clients - a fortunate inaccuracy in the filing system. Another find was that Mien Ruys' last project on record was a planting scheme for a private garden in Wijchen dated March 23, 1995, when she was 90 years old.

TuiN database
The projects remaining after this first selection have been renumbered when the new filing system required this. In the original card index box, up to 22 completely different projects were sometimes lumped together under one project number. The systematics used in the TuiN database provided a simple solution for this problem (see 3. Protocol for selection and documentation). Another large collection, that of  Leonard Springer, has been documented in the database previously, and the Mien Ruys collection numbers were put in accordingly. Incidentally, a very small collection of Mien Ruys documentation could already be found in TuiN. An example of what the new records look like can be seen in www.library.wur.nl/tuin/, under [Objecten] ->[field Naam, type in:] De Groote Scheere [plus field Locatie, type in:]Gramsbergen.
In the near future, more material shall be documented and made available in TuiN database, e.g. the original sketches and drawings, photographic material and material acquired from third parties which has not been included in this study.

Biographical material
Meanwhile, a start has been made with the inventory and the collection of material for the second phase of the Mien Ruys project, the biography. This includes among others an inventory of the library of specialist literature collected by Mien Ruys herself - a task that was complicated by the fact that it also includes all the copies of books that were reviewed in Onze Eigen Tuin, the gardening quarterly she and her husband started in 1954.
In addition, Ruys' private diaries and secundary literature about her contemporaries have been studied, and a number of interviews with people who have worked with her has been conducted.

Photo: Part of the 120 removal boxes containing the Mien Ruys collection, temporarily located in one of the rooms of the WUR Library

Condition of the documents
The drawings from the pre-1960 period were usually filed by folding them and putting them into filing envelopes together with the other papers (reporrts, correspondence, bills etc.). Since the quality of the tracing paper used was often poor, unfolding the brittle material was often precarious. Fortunately, after 1960 all drawings were stored in cylindrical containers.
Another cause of damage are materials such as tape, rubber band, staples and paperclips, which have been removed as much as possible.
At the first inventory of the removal boxes, in addition to damage cause by humidity, traces of mouse damage were found. In the end only two very superficially made mouse nests were found in the boxes, causing only little damage.

Photo: Remains of a mouse nest in one of the removal boxes

Interesting finds
During the first selection some interesting finds were made, including two boxes containing designs and planting schemes from the 1946-1952 period of which only very few documents remain - a very unfortunate fact, for this was probably the most important period in Ruys' oeuvre.
One discovery was a series of sketches, designs and planting schemes for the grand border on the edge of the artificial lake at St. Hubertus Hunting Lodge - a unique design by architect Berlage for the Kröller-Müller family in the shape of a deerhead - at National Park De Hoge Veluwe. It is without a doubt one of the largest perennial borders (if not the largest) that Ruys has ever designed.

Photo: ‘Amended planting scheme for the first part of the grand border in National Park “De Hoge Veluwe” ‘. September 1950.

In the same folder, a planting scheme on tracing paper touched up with colour pencil for the courtyard garden of the Kröller-Müller museum (by architect Henri van der Velde) was found. For two reasons this is a special document: No other presentation drawings for any of her work for National Park De Hoge Veluwe were ever found before. What's more, other presentation drawings from the pre-1955 period for her designs are without exception either collotypes that have been touched up with colour pencil or tracings in ink by different persons, whereas Ruys' original designs are almost always in plain pencil on tracing paper.

Photo:Part of the ‘sketch plan of the Kröller-Müller Museum courtyard ’. April 1948.

Photos: Filing racks with buffered boxes and acid-free folders

New material
From the Laboratory for Spatial Analysis, Planning and Design (Wageningen UR) additional material was received after its library was integrated in the central library of Wageningen UR. It consisted amongst others of 47 collotypes used by a student, Reinco Geertsema, who worked at Buro Mien Ruys as a trainee and subsequently wrote as his final paper an analysis of Mien Ruys' work (Geertsema R., Mien Ruys, beschrijving en documentatie van haar beroepspraktijk. Non-published paper, Wageningen Agricultural College 1982). Rather odd is the 14-page text of what is probably the first interview he conducted with Mien Ruys, in which the recording was literally transcribed ('Do you smoke?' 'Yes, please!').

Public garden
Among the newly received material was the collotype shown above, of a design for a public garden (Ganzeweide, city of Ede). It dates from 1954 and it shows all the characteristics of Ruys' designs in that period, including a simple, protective shrub planting enclosing a childrens' playground with sandpit, and diagonal paths at right angles to each other.

Houseboat garden
Another plan shows the design for a garden at the mooring place of a houseboat. Once again diagonals are found, but here they are caused by the angle at which the mooring place for the boat is cut out in the bank of the canal. Every designed element is at a right angle with the cut-away: apron, lean-to, perennial and herb borders.

Council housing
A third plan concerns a council housing project at Hardinxveld, where a communal design was made for all the front gardens in one street, with a standard planting scheme consisting of a limited number of species:
- Sorbaria tomentosa
- Laburnum anagyroides
- Rosa 'Paul’s Scarlet Climber'
- Cotoneaster dielsianus var. elegans
- Crataegus paulii (now probably Crataegus laevigata ‘William Paul’ or‘Coccinea Plena’ ).

In the planting schemes for the corner houses, birch and the climbing plant Parthenocissus tricuspidata have been added. On the right, a shrub border shields off the space behind the housing block. It is composed of (presently correct botanical names between brackets):
- Viburnum rhytidophyllum
- Malus purpurea
- Spiraea vanhouttei
- Prunus serrulata ‘Hizakura’
- Rosa eglanteria magnifica (= R.e. duplex ‘Weston’)
- Forsythia spectabilis (probably F. x intermedia)
- Chaenomeles lagenaria ‘Umbilicata’ (?)
- Philadelphus lemoinei
- Ribes sanguineum flore pleno (= ’Plenum’)
- Philadelphus ‘Lemoinei’
- Cornus sanguineum
- Deutzia crenata ‘Pride of Rochester’.

Similar shrub combinations may be found in other planting schemes Mien Ruys designed for public gardens.

Photo: Standard planting scheme for council housing front gardens, Hardinxveld

Coloured plans
Among the rare pre-1960 material, a few coloured plans were found. It was known that Mien Ruys was hardely interested in presenting her designs herself. The preparation of presentation drawings was usually left to her staff, who traced her pencil drawings in ink. From the pre-1950 period however, a number of designs touched up in colour pencil are known. Some of these were also produced by her staff, but a few are unmistakeably by her own hand. The one depicted below dates from 1948. Characteristic for Mien Ruys’ hand are the lettering, the shape of the arrow indicating the north and the hatching.

Photo: Plan for the garden of Mr. Daniels, Arnhem, November 1948

Repetition of forms
A much more recent design for a garden near a windmill in the province of Overijssel shows a solution of a type that is often seen in Ruys' work. It is a repetition of the forms of the building in those of the garden design. At the lower right of the plan, the contours of the windmill base can be seen. The angular base of the mill is repeated in the adjoining terrace, whereas the round cross-section of the building's body is repeated in almost the same size in the circular garden plan. In addition, the shape end size of the buttresses is repeated in the shape and size of the separate beds in the garden.

Photo: Windmill, angular terrace and circular garden, with beds repeating the shape of the buttresses.

Lecture notes of Granpré Molière
Buro Mien Ruys had on file a number of copy books and notepads with lecture notes. One contains the notes Mien Ruys made when she was reading architecture in the early 1930's with professor Granpré Molière at the Delft Technical College. A few quotes from these notes may serve to sum up the controversy existing between the Traditionalists of the Delft School (headed by Granpré) and the Modernists whose work Ruys admired:
'According to Le Corbusier, emotion is art's single goal. According to Prof. G. Molière it isn't meant to provide emotion but rest. In our times, beauty is too often identified with usefulness'.
'Functional elements are often preceded by the same ones used as decorative elements. Many modernists say that evry articulation follows from construction. This is a misunderstanding of the creative drive. Many articulations have originated as decorations and have gradually become functional'.
'Aristotle says that the impossible-probable is better than the possible-improbable. As beauty is concerned ist is not a question of what is possible but of what is probable. In modern architecture small abutments are often used to bear a great mass, this is probable but not beautiful'.

 
Photo: First page of Granpré Molière lecture notes by Mien Ruys

Replacement of J.T.P.Bijhouwer
When prof. J.T.P.Bijhouwer, with whom Ruys had a close professional and private relationship, in 1951 went to the USA to teach for one year, he asked her to take over part of his lectures at Wageningen Agricultural College, Dept. of Garden and Landscape Architecture, and at Delft Technical College, dept. of Architecture.

Photo: Cover of correspondence folder

The lectures held by Ruys in were a series called ’Perennial plant assortment, especially its application and decorative value. Practical: Gardening exercises'. Bijhouwer's other lectures - 'History of garden architecture, culminating in the park and public gardens. Pracrtical: Public gardens' were taken over by Hein Otto. Her lecture texts, and her correspondence with Bijhouwer, both Colleges and with Hein Otto have been preserved in the collection .

Photo: Introduction first lecture Delft Technical College.

Non-published manuscript
In the late 1980s Mien Ruys was asked by the US publisher Timber Press to write a book in which she would expound her principles of garden architecture. She completed the manuscript in 1989. It was provided with an introduction by prof. S.M.Namenwirth, whose wife translated it into English. In ‘From Chaos to Design; Principles of Garden Design’, the translator tried to render Mien Ruys' particular style of expression. At the publisher's request, a more fluent translation was made of the first few chapters. When a management change took place at Timber Press, publication of the book was cancelled. A copy of the manuscript is present in the collection.

Documents from the private estate of Mien Ruys
A number of documents acquired from the private estate of Mien Ruys may throw more light on some hitherto unknown biographical details. They are comprised of letters, photographs and typescripts of articles and books published by Mien Ruys.
As of 1929, she started to publish a great number of articles for many magzines and daily papers.



For the garden journal Onze Tuinen in 1929 she wrote a report in 3 instalments (16 and 30 August and 6 September) about the Grosse Ruhrländische Gartenbauausstellung (Great Garden Exhibition of Ruhrland) GRUGA in Essen, Germany. The journal issued a press card for her, written in German in the name of 'Mia (!) Ruys, garden artist' and signed by A.J. van Laren (editor-in-chief of the journal and director of the Amsterdam botanical garden).

Berlin
Later that year, Ruys studied Garden Art at the recently founded Institut für Gartengestaltung  (Institute for Garden Design) at the Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule (Agricultural College) of Dahlem, Berlin (adjacent to the Botanische Garten).Two envelopes give us the adresses she stayed at during her Berlin period. On the reverse of the above envelope she jotted down a short list of study books she needed to buy, among others andere Hugo Koch, Gartenkunst im Städtebau en Paul Schultze Naumburg, Die Gestaltung der Landschaft durch den Menschen. The address at the Zimmermannstrasse was at a distance of about 1,5 km from the college; the second address, Ringstrasse in Lichterfelde-West was about a 2 km distance.

Correspondence
It has not been established whether Mien Ruys actually visited  Karl foerster in Bornim during her Berlin stay, but it is not unlikely, since she knew him from his visits to her father's nursery Moerheim (Foerster called him 'der Staudenkönig' (the king of perennial plants), and she did visit Foerster's chef of the garden design department and close companion, garden architect Hermann Mattern. When in 1933 the Nazis rose to power in Germany, Mien Ruys broek off all contacts with German colleagues. After World War II the bonds she started writing to Foerster again, but since his nursery was in the Communist zone apparently they did not meet again.
When Foerster's wife Eva wrote to Mien Ruys in 1971 after her husband's demise, she said that 'he often regretted that those wonderful pre-war friendships were never the samen again'.

Gertrude Jekyll
Among Ruys private corespondence one note form Gertrude Jekyll was found, in which she invites Ruys to visit her:
‘Dear Miss Ruys, It will give me the greatest pleasure to receive you next Wednesday the 29th. I hope it will suit you to let your visit be in the afternoon & will you please go everywhere as you wish - the upper part of the ground is woodland which may be pleasant to wander in if the day is hot. The flowery part is below the house & lawn.
I only wish your visit might have been in the later summer, for the greater part of what you will see is preparation for effect in August and September’…

Delft Technical College
The exact dating of Ruys reading Architecture at Delft College has become possible when her certificate of enrolment was found - that is to say, the quarter of the document on which her photograph is affixed. Fortunately, the reverse shows that it was the 1931-32 term, that she had one lecture per week by Granpré and two per week on the history of Art or Architecture by ...thouwer. Further research may provide more details.

Association of Dutch Garden Architects BNT
Mien Ruys’ slightly problematic relationship with her professional association has been dealt with by others. Two documents shed more light on it. One is letter from the BNT Board announcing its intention to award her the (newly created!) honorary membership in 1980.
A correspondence card letter was written by one of the founders of BNT, garden architect Hugo Poortman (then 84 years of age), in which he applauds her decision to cancel her membership of BNT. Ruys had tried in vain to convince the BNT board that it should disband itself, in order to avoid having to cooperate with the German occupier in creating 'assimilated' - i.e. collaborating - professional associations under the so-called Cultuurkamer (Chamber of Culture) .

The translation of Poortman's card is:
‘A privilige I deem it to just have heard Esteemed Ms. Ruys that you have resigned from BNT and refused to enrol in the Cultuurkamer. You and some others with you possess the sense that a free Holland and people acting and thinking as free persons are more honourable and happy than when one resigns oneself to orders from the powers that be, only for the sake of securing one's bread. Bravo! and my regards for this. If only half of Holland should think like thou, our freedom of thought and action would soon replace the present subjugation. My sincerest wishes and best regards, also for your father. [P.S.] It was a pleasure to read your article in 'de 8 en opb[ouw]'.
With his last remark, Poortman refers to Ruys' article 'The Architect and the Garden' that had just been published in the journal of the movement for Modernist architecture.

Ida Falkenberg
For a better understanding of the evolution of Ruys' political views in the pre- and post-war period, it may be helpful to look at her relationships with politically active friends and other relations.
One example may be found in the well-known designer Ida (Liv) Falkenberg-Liefrinck (1901-), some of whose letters to Mien from the period of 1948-1970 were found among Ruys' correspondence. Falkenberg, who worked amongst others with J.J.P. Oud, designed funriture and glassobjects and was a member of 'de 8' was later one of the ideological hard-liners within 'de 8 en Opbouw'. After World War II she and her husband Otto worked in Eastern Germany. Ida stayed in touch with Mien, and wrote to her about her contacts with Karl Foerster, in whose vicinity they lived in 1948-1950.

The fragment reads: 'Dear Mien, these days we had a charming visit of the old gentleman Förster. He came in through the garden door and stood in the hall unexpectedly, a large white-haired man in a white suit, his arms filled with a bunch of yucca's and mexican grasses...' The correspondence between Mien Ruys and Ida Falkenberg lasted at least until 1972.

Photos
Some of the photos found in Ruys’ private estate provide interesting complementary information or just a nice atmospheric desription.

After the damage done to the seadykes in the south-west of Holland in World War II, Mien Ruys was appointed as advisor for the reorganization of the island of Schouwen (excepting the coastal area proper). This photo was published in De Groene Amsterdammer daily newspaper. On the reverse is the caption: 'Mien Ruys making notes, on the sea dyke at Schouwen, with her driver (her sister and co-worker) (far left)'. This is her sister Mieke (M.C.H.) Ruys, who worked at the Amsterdam office many years.

Ruys’ cooperation with several renowned modernist architects is said to have been based on her ability to speak the same language. Some architects had a definite preference for using Ruys as the designer of the public spaces around their building projects. Hein Salomonson, on the far left, was among them.

Repetitive borders
Even before she developed the concept of standardized or 'confection' borders for small private gardens, Ruys seemed to apply a similar type of rationalization in some planting schemes for council housing projects. These 'repetetive borders showed very clear patterns in which she used a limited number of plant species - mostly perennials, but sometimes combined with shrubs. They were also applied in the gardens of large institutional or company buildings. The sole purpose of the 'repetitive border' however was the rhythmical repetition of shapes and colours in order to create a visual impact. 'Repetitive borders'are seen in the period of 1949-1970.

Photo: Repetitive border for counsel housing project in Geuzenveld, Amsterdam (1956-61); architecture by van den Broek en Bakema, supervision Merkelbach en Bijhouwer

Repetitive borderof Röpcke Zweersstichting (hospital), Hardenberg (1970)

Save a few instances the plants in repetitive borders are arranged in lozenge-shaped patterns. A comparable zig-zag pattern was applied by Ruys in a border design for the Nederlandse Katoenspinnerij (Dutch Cotton Spinning Mill), Hengelo (1949). In 1965, it was modified into a more conventional planting scheme - but with the same proven perennial and shrub species.

Unknown designs
A recent request for the appraisal of a possible Mien Ruys design that was under threat of being split up led to the rediscovery of a garden that was very scantily documented. It is the Muzenhof, situated in the middle of the up-market residential area of Amsterdam-Zuid, completed in 1940. Its design by F.J.Berghoef, one of the more modern architects of the Delft School, was commisioned by construction company H.van Saane, a cooperation continued after the earlier delivery of the better known Geuzenhof - for which Mien Ruys also designed the gardens. Since the Muzenhof garden is shut in by the surrounding appartment blocks, and since it is not accessible for anyone but maintenance staff, it has survived relatively unscathed. The oblong space is divided by a shorter rectangle in the shape of a very low, 5-brick high wall topped with a brick-on-edge coping. Within this enclosure are two rectangular concrete ponds and two narrow concrete canals, in a ground plan that looks zygomorphic.
A number of Japanese Cherry trees (Prunus serrata ‘Kwanzan’), some columnar Yews and two of the original three Laburnums are all that remains of the original planting scheme - maybe with the addition of some very large arboreous Ivies. Laburnums of this age are especially rare, the extremely shielded position is the probable reason why they are still standing.
Identification of the garden was made rather difficult, since no mention of it was found in the Buro's archives. A rather vague photo in the Perennial Book by Mien Ruys (1950) was later identified through R. Geertsema's graduation paper as representing the Muzenhof. Definitive proof was found by pure coincidence in a convocation of the BNT of 1941, where an excursion was announced to two of Mien Ruys recent works in Amsterdam, the Geuzenhof and the Muzenhof. Later, another earlier photo turned up in the Buro's photo archives.

Photo: De Muzenhof, spring 2005

More new material was acquired after an appeal made in Onze Eigen Tuin, Ruys' own garden journal - still in existence today! - for information about unknown designs. A very nice example is the design for the country estate De Groote Scheere, Gramsbergen (1940). Plans were made for a new design of the grounds and a decorative garden (see detail below). The outbreak of World War II put a stop to its realization.

Another example of an early design (1930) by Mien Ruys was found near a villa in Santpoort, built by J.H.W. Leliman (1908). The original presentation drawing in colour remains, as do some details in the lay-out, such as a brick path flanking the lawn and ending in one corner in a circle flanked by a semicircular brick bench (see detail below).

3. Protocol selection and documentation

Selection: Primary criteria

Below you will find a description of the criteria used in the first selection of the documents contained in the filing envelopes that were originally stored in the removal boxes containing the Mien Ruys collection.

• Only documents relevant to project numbers that can wholly or partially be ascribed to Mien Ruys have been selected as a subject for documentation.

• Insofar as the worksheets of the projects are available they have been taken as the first ground for exclusion: if no hours have been ascribed to Mien Ruys, the project is deemed to have been executed by her staff only and has not been documented.

• If on the worksheets less than 10% of the hours has been ascribed to Mien Ruys or if no work sheets are extant, other factors have determined whether or not the project has been documented.

• If no worksheets are extant and if on one or more invoices hours have been specifically ascribed to Mien Ruys, the project has been documented.

• If one or more designs or sketches bear the designation 'ONTW(ERP)MR' (designed by Mien Ruys), the project has been documented.

• In case of doubt the assessment of the attribution of a porject has been made in cooperation with Hans Veldhoen, garden and landscape architect, successor to Mien Ruys at the Buro. In cases where he did not feel he could make a positive attribution either, the project has been documented.

Selection: secundary criteria

The criteria described below have been applied in order to decide which documents pertaining to projects that have been selected for documentation are selected and which ones are excluded.
All the original drawings have been documented, irrespective of whether they were made on drawing-paper, sketching-paper, tracing paper or any other material.
Copies of original drawings, whether on tracing paper or collotypes have only been documented when:
- the original was not extant, was unreadable or unusable, or if:
- the copy contains additional information.
All other documents pertaining to the selected projects have been included in their intirety.

Documentation: Arrangement

Numbering

All documents are provided with a project number and a serial number. This number has the following structure:

47.ppppA.vvv

47 = Designation of architect Mien Ruys according to the validation list of the TuiN database
pppp = 4-digit basic project number, when possible in accordance with the original project numbers in the physical card index and prefixed zeroes where required.
A = addition to project number of 1 capital when original project number was used for more than one project
vvv = 3-digit serial number, including prefixed zeroes where required

As a result, a concrete document number will look like this: 47.0968B.032

Bundled documents
Documents containing correspondence, reports, invoices etc. have been bundled under one or (accoording to size) more serial numbers. Whenever it was deemed necessary documents belonging to this category were given a separate serial number.
The project numbers have been taken from the electronic card index of Buro Mien Ruys.
Projects that were not recorded in the electronic card index were given new numbers, starting with 5000.

Storage

From all documents paperclips, tape and rubber bands and other materials that may damage the documents were removed before storage.
The documents are stored in acid-free folders and/or in buffered cardboard file boxes of a quality meeting the standards for document storage.
On every folder and file box the complete project number is given. When documents of more than two project are contained in the folder/file box, only the firstand the last number are mentioned in full.
In TuiN database the 'location' (Vindplaats) field under Documents is rendered as follows:

Folders: ‘map 47.1234’; ‘map 47.1234A’; ‘map 47.1234-1242’ etc.
File box: ‘doos 47.5678.1, doos 47.5678.2’ of 'doos 47.0185A.1' etc.

In the notation on file boxes, the last digit (.1, .2 etc.) only pertains to the physical arrangement of the boxes. If there is only one box, the last '.[digit]'is omitted.

Documents lent out to Buro Mien Ruys

As the copyright of the documents remains with Buro Mien Ruys it has been agreed that Buro Mien Ruys can ask to borrow any documents at any time. Documents thus lent out may be identified in TuiN database as follows:

1. The field Vindplaats (location) will read: 'Buro Mien Ruys'
2. The text field Aanvullende informatie (additional information) will read: 'BMR [datum (ddmmjj)]'

4. Gardens, Projects and Documents: Statistics

TuiN is a 3-tiered database: Projects are linked to Gardens, Documents are in turn linked to Projects. The table shows the totals for all categories in the 3 tiers at the moment this report was written.