GARDEN WALLS

Characteristic of the Texel landscape are the garden walls (‘tuunwoallen’). The parcel boundaries built from grass sods that border the sheep pastures on the higher Pleistocene sand accentuate, as it were, the undulating character of the landscape. The garden walls were constructed after the abolition of the right to graze everywhere. From then on, the livestock had to remain on their own lands, and a form of parcel separation had to be devised.
In the hilly old land of Texel, digging ditches was not possible due to the low groundwater level. Setting up fences made of wood was also not an option because there was hardly any wood to be found on the then nearly treeless Texel. Thus, the garden walls were made from grass sods.
Garden walls are built on both sides from stacked grass sods, filled inside with sand or loose soil and covered from above with a cover sod. To prevent the sheep from jumping over the walls, thorny branches from dunes were inserted.

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