- “If you have beautiful plants, it doesn’t mean your garden is beautiful. Something is complete when everything works together.” — Piet Oudolf
Over the last decade, Piet Oudolf has become a ‘superstar’ in the gardening world. But few people have knowledge of the man who creates magnificent works of art. I was compelled to set up an interview with him exactly for that reason. I wanted to better understand his process, priorities, vision, response to his completed designs….in other words, Piet’s ‘gestalt’.
Piet’s Early Years
Initially, Piet was what he described as ‘a conventional Dutch garden designer’ influenced by Mien Ruys, the only garden designer in Holland who was talking about the importance of plants at that time. A trip to England in the late 70s whet Piet’s appetite and fueled his imagination and the desire to create different types of gardens. He was especially taken with Alan Bloom’s garden and Hidcote. In the early 80s, Piet and his wife, Anja, feeling that they needed more space, moved to a less populated area in Holland, a village outside of Hummelo. It was during those years that they travelled to England, Germany and the Balkans in order to bring back a wide range of plant material that had never been used in Holland.
Piet Oudolf's Hummelo Garden, "Grass Days" in September, Photo © Tony Spencer
In the introduction of the book Designing With Plants that Noel Kingsbury co-wrote with Piet, Noel writes “In 1984 Piet and Anja conducted an experiment which proved to be a watershed in the Dutch horticultural industry. They held an open day, which they advertised in the media, inviting like-minded nurseries to come and sell plants. Nothing like it had been seen in the Netherlands before: people came and bought plants, while the nursery owners networked with each other.” Piet and Anja began to experiment with plants at their nursery. The rest is history. Piet has named or created over 70 new plant varieties, many of renown throughout the world today. A leading figure in the “new perennial” planting movement of the 1990’s, Piet notes that when a plant ‘also attracts insects, butterflies and birds, it is a truly ideal plant!’
Piet Oudolf's Garden in August, Photo © Ineke Janssen
It is important to understand that an Oudolf garden does not begin to show itself until mid-to late summer, when most of the perennials and grasses have matured and flowered so that the garden is full of texture, color and scale. But for me, his gardens really come into their own in the fall, when the grasses have matured into their straw-brown color or reddish and purple tones and other perennials are swaying in the breeze, many of them with seedheads and some still in bloom.
Coneflower (Echinacea) Seedheads - Photo © Piet Oudolf
One of Piet’s many achievements has been his ability to help re-mold the public’s notion of the lifecycle of a garden, opening up the possibility of the winter garden as a beautiful, magical season. With snow and ice covering the tops and stems of dead perennials and grasses, what were once considered leftovers from the fall garden are now perceived as elements of an emotional and architecturally interesting seasonal garden.
Piet Oudolf's Hummelo Garden in Winter - Photo © Piet Oudolf
A Conversation with Piet
Piet Oudolf
Piet is always thinking about his gardens: it is a process that rarely leaves him. Although Piet is in high demand for commissions, I was left with the impression that it is an arduous task for him to meet with potential clients and try to convince them not only about the style of his work but also the time that it will take for his gardens to mature. He feels that most clients still want immediate results with gardens: that they are lacking in patience and are not willing to observe and enjoy the beauty of a garden maturing over time.
In talking about his career, Piet mentioned important colleagues and plantsmen who have left an imprint on him: Rob Leopold, Henk Gerritsen, Cassian Schmidt, Dan Pearson and Karl Foerster, who he considers to be his idol. For him, Karl Foerster was a great plantsman who intuitively knew how to use grasses in a border: he possessed a vision of how they would feel in conjunction with perennials.
For Piet, the public may offer positive comments about his work but they are still reticent about fully embracing it. Although one would think that this “superstar” of the gardening world would be basking in all of his successes, I didn’t sense that he is. Instead, I felt a concern and hope that the public would catch on to his work and begin to implement elements of it in their gardens, not because of his ego but because he feels it will be good for the future of gardening. He reminds me a bit of a parent who really does know what’s best for his children and is quietly trying to nudge them towards a certain direction.
For Piet, symmetry in design is easy but balance is trickier to attain. When he looks at an architect’s plan, he always asks what the intent of the design is. Over the years, Piet feels that his gardens have come to embody more emotion, complexity, depth, drama and coherence.
A Piet Oudolf Garden Creation in Bonn, Germany in High Summer, Photo © Piet Oudolf
He discussed how time is one of the critical components in creating a garden: that a gardener needs to watch perennials closely over time to see how they evolve. What do they look like in conjunction with companion plantings and how does the “gestalt” of the garden feel once a garden has matured? More than once during our conversation, Piet returned to the concept of complexity in his designs. I sensed when he was using words to try to explain it to me that at the same time, in his mind, he was visualizing certain elements of a garden.
Color is not of major importance in Piet’s gardens. He believes that if the right material is used in the right location, then the color will automatically fall into place. He considers brown to be a color, as is evidenced in his late summer, fall and winter gardens.
A Piet Oudolf Garden Creation in West Cork, Ireland, Photo © Piet Oudolf
When questioned about reflecting on his work over time, Piet made light of it, preferring to focus on the here and now. Clearly, his work has evolved, and in recent years, in a revolutionary way. He talked about how he has made dramatic changes to his own garden, tearing up and replanting much of the front area. Where Piet once was known for his flowering perennial gardens with some grasses strategically planted among them, his gardens now feel like a force of nature, with huge sweeps of perennial grasses, from low growing to massive ones as the foundation of the design. I walked away from the conversation with the sense that he is absolutely fearless and relentless in what he does.
For Piet, it is the client that counts. After 25 years of work, he feels that clients know that they can count him to get the job done. He said that it takes three years for his job to be finished. Piet needs to watch a garden mature before he feels his work has been completed. For him, the success of a garden is when the design is taken seriously by the client: if that’s not the case, Piet can easily move on and forget the garden. Yet, when clients do appreciate his work, these gardens will always be his babies: he is never able to totally detach himself from them. Noel Kingsbury, who also wrote Planting Design: Gardens In Time and Space with Piet, described Piet initially as a man of few words: “Like all Dutch, Piet tends to be quiet upon a first meeting but once you know him, he is warm, generous and open.” Noel, not surprisingly, said that Piet is a man of many interests and is well versed in a number of subjects; and how when Piet and Anja travel, he has the ability to enjoy other things besides gardening. I had made the assumption that Piet visited other gardens throughout the world, but I was wrong. Noel explained that Piet is always willing to talk about plants and share ideas but that he does not visit other gardens.
Piet is a true artist. Photo © Saxon Holt.
Noel and I discussed several
of the gardens that Piet has created; but it is The Lurie Garden at Millenium Park that Noel is particularly taken with, labeling it a “gutsy garden.” He talked about how Piet was not familiar with all of the native plant material of the Midwest prairie when he took on the project. But because of his tremendous curiosity, Piet learned about the plants indigenous to the region and used them prolifically in this landmark Chicago garden.
It’s Piet’s hope that this garden will act as a model for gardeners throughout the Midwest to become familiarized with a new way of gardening and eventually start bringing elements of it into residential and commercial gardens of that region.
Noel praised Piet’s work, discussing the complexity, structure and genius of his creations. But when Noel also mentioned the integrity of Piet’s gardens, my ears perked up.
Noel said that Piet easily could have developed a thriving, multi-tiered business but chose to maintain his own hands-on work. He has never wanted to shortcut a client and feels that all of the design, from soup to nuts, needs to be done by him. Noel reflected for a moment, then said: “Piet is a true artist.”
I can only compare Piet’s ability to the great jazz musician, Miles Davis. His music making was so fluid, effortless and magical that most listeners came to believe that the sounds he made and the music he created, emanated from deep within his soul, with little effort. Similar to Miles Davis, Piet’s work is highly structured. I can best describe the structure of his designs by comparing it to the instruments that comprise an orchestra. Every one adds an important element to the orchestra: with its own unique sound, depth, texture, emotion and complexity. And yet each instrument’s sound is always in unison with all others in the orchestra. The end result is magical, the sum being much greater than the individual parts added together.
The process Piet goes through in creating gardens allows him tremendous freedom to explore and let his unconscious rip within the body of the “music.” Without a doubt, thousands of hours have gone into relentlessly studying and getting to know intricate details of each plant and experimenting with different plant combinations and how they intermingle and couple with their neighbors over time.
So the next time you are lucky enough to walk through one of Piet’s gardens, pause and breathe in the unique qualities that this piece of art offers you. Don’t be casual about it. Although his plants may come off as wild, his gardens are never out of control. They are executed with precision by a man who knows what he’s doing, a humble man for sure, and an individual who is aware of how blessed his life is. As the ultimate perfectionist, when asked if he is ever happy with his creations, Piet replies quietly with “No. I always feel that I could have done better.”
Piet Oudolf – Public Gardens – High Line, New York
Piet Oudolf – Public Gardens – The Battery, New York
Pensthorpe Waterfowl Trust, Norfolk, England
Fran Sorin, author of Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening, is a well known gardening expert and communicator. Her multi-media exposure as an author, broadcaster, journalist, and speaker, affords her the opportunity to share her belief that gardening is a conduit for living a healthier, more creative, and joyful life. Fran is the CBS Radio News Gardening Contributor and the Producer of the highly trafficked group blog, Gardening Gone Wild.
