• Short Japanese Garden season, only a few weeks each spring and autumn to protect its fragile moss, so check the dates before you promise it
• Free time slot needed for the Japanese Garden since autumn 2026, brought in to end the long queues
• Main house stays closed, since Huys Clingendael has been home to the Clingendael international relations institute since 1982, so the visit is all outdoors

Clingendael is a landscaped estate park with woodland paths, an old Dutch garden of box hedges and flower beds, a curving 18th-century fruit wall and a dogs' cemetery under a linden tree. Its Japanese Garden, laid out over a century ago by Baroness Marguérite van Brienen after a trip to Japan, is the largest in the Netherlands, with stone lanterns, a thatched pavilion and fragile moss.