Wirtz, Jacques, 1924–2018, Belgian landscape architect. Highly influential, he used classical techniques in new and innovative ways in the more than 100 gardens and grounds he designed for corporate headquarters, colleges, and museums, residences and estates, and public parks. His sculptural landscapes use inventive and repeated patterns and rhythms, and he tended to enhance the natural landscape rather than hiding it, using grasses, flowering plants, hedges, evergreens, and areas of water. Wirtz achieved international acclaim with his garden for the Belgian Pavilion at Expo '70, Osaka, Japan, and his redesign of the Carrousel Garden, Paris (opened 1993), which connects the Louvre museum with the Tuileries Gardens, is famous. His other gardens include Jubilee Park, Canary Wharf, London, with its evergreen parades and ponds; 't Kristallijn museum, Mol-Rauw, Belgium, with its lakeside flowing grasses; and, with his son Peter, the redeveloped garden at Alnwick Castle, England, with its geometric hedges and waterfalls.
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