(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to New York Times, Piet Oudolf on 2008-02-01, 05:06:00

August garden beds: My take on the Oudolf style
There a good article over at the New York Times about Piet Oudolf. The writer tours his Hummelo garden in winter and notes his love of the look of perennials that have died away - the shapes and forms of seedheads and dried foliage.

This quote from the article is good summing up of Oudolf's garden style:

"He's gotten away from the soft pornography of the flower," said Charles Waldheim, the director of the landscape architecture program at the University of Toronto. "He's interested in the life cycle, how plant material ages over the course of the year," and how it relates to the plants around it. Like a good marriage, his compositions must work well together as its members age.

Oudolf is quoted, saying:

"When I started, 35 years ago, everything was focused on the traditional English garden. It was all flower and color. It was dogmatic — deadheading, staking. I got a bit tired of that."

The lack of fussiness, tossing out high maintenance deadheading and staking, combining grasses with naturalistic perennials - these are all the qualities that drew me to his style, which happens to be tailor-made for country gardens.

I once had the pleasure of interviewing Piet Oudolf for an article in Gardening Life magazine. This page on at my web site is an adaptation of that article.


© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to Garden Design, Piet Oudolf on 2008-01-23, 19:22:00

I enjoyed this month's Garden Design magazine (February 2008). The issue's main feature stories cover European gardens, including Piet Oudolf's famous Hummelo garden.

Oudolf has been a great influence in my own gardening, and we even have a bed that we used to call the Oudolf border.

Now that I've let it go more or less naturalized, I call it the wild garden, and treat it like the meadow. This means we just mow around it and have stopped weeding, edging and controlling the plants - they just fight it out now.

What has always intrigued me about Oudolf is the fact that so many of the plants he favors are North American natives, which, of course, makes them perfect for country gardens in Canada and the US.

What he likes about our plants is their stamina, looks, late-flowering tendencies, fall colors and winter textures. This is exactly the look that I came to adore through his example.

When I began my garden here, it was with plant lists take from Oudolf's books, as well as those of James van Sweden, of Oehme van Sweden fame. They are my garden design heros.



© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener