Marker Wadden wins the René Pechère Prize 2025!

Marker Wadden: Nature, Construction, Design

Marker Wadden has won the 2025 Dutch Literary René Pechère Prize! The eighth award ceremony took place on Friday morning, February 20, 2026, at the Muntpunt Library in Brussels. Franz Ziegler, one of the authors, accepted the prize.

The Belgian literary prize is awarded biennially to a Dutch-language book on garden art or landscape design. Twenty-one titles were selected for 2025, resulting in a shortlist of six works. The laureate was chosen based on the criteria of relevance of the content, quality of the writing style, illustrations, graphic design, and book design. In all these areas, “one publication clearly stood out,” according to the jury: Marker Wadden.

The book received the positive commentary (translated from Dutch): “Rarely have I read a specialist book in one sitting… A testament to the high level of craftsmanship of various disciplines, understanding and complementing each other. What a completeness of a new man-made landscape surrounded by water.” Treeless but with a growing character where the new land integrates into the already acquired water landscape of the past. A wonderfully high degree of feasibility, expertly depicted and written, even for laypeople. Magnificent, like a rebirth of (here he comes again) God created the earth, except for the Netherlands, because…’

Picture: Hans Druart, Franz Ziegler, Mark Hendriks, Mieke van Dijk, Myriam van de Velde and Rob Janmaat (photograph © Jo Voets)