He has developed a stability in his plantings, choosing plants that are happy in each other's company, are well adapted to their environment and have the ability to go the long haul. Oudolf describes the design as the start and not the end of the process. Nature by its very order is based on competition – and, to a degree, chaos – and this is why we have found it easier to formalise our public plantings. In addition, an informal aesthetic, which draws its inspiration from nature, is not an easy thing to maintain. Public work, and particularly planting design, is always the most demanding because once a garden is planted, the future success and durability is then entirely down to the people who maintain it. He found that through working with a group he could communicate his ideas and bring them to a wider audience. His public works marked a turning point in his career. And this is why it has touched so many people. Oudolf believes that his work has intellectual depth, which it does in that it is beautifully thought through on all these levels, but it is also about a feeling. The premise of the book is based on the deconstruction of his plantings, which Oudolf describes as "a complicated layering of seasonality, energy, endurance and reward – both before, during and after flowering". The desire to explain his planting principles came out of a workshop at Harvard University two years ago for which he had to distil his process and make it tangible. He has written five in total with his co-author Noel Kingsbury of whom he says: "It's easy to collaborate with people that can share." The book combines the inspiration of his 1991 Dream Plants for the Natural Gardenand the practicality of Planting Design: Gardens in Time and Space, and it treads a well-pitched line in providing gritty information to the professional and the amateur alike.
We met last month to discuss his new book, Planting: A New Perspective (Timber Press, £30). I have known Oudolf for the best part of 20 years, and we share a similar dream and passion. He was also at the forefront of a zeitgeist and developed a world-famous nursery with his wife Anja to enable this experimentation.
A push against the order of agriculture and the line of the polder was arguably the inspiration, but Oudolf has an impeccable eye for a good plant and the ability to combine them with a loose confidence. Holland is an interesting place for this to happen, being a country of predominantly reclaimed ground. He missed spontaneity and wanted to create what he described as a "dream landscape" through combining plants naturalistically. T he Dutch designer Piet Oudolf began his particular journey when he planted up his garden at Hummelo, in the Netherlands, in 1981.
0 kommentar(er)
