Piet Oudolf

Piet Oudolf ( born October 27, 1944 in Haarlem ) is a Dutch landscape gardener.

Life

Piet Oudolf originally worked in his parents' restaurant as a waiter and bartender, then as a fishmonger and steel workers. At the age of 25, he began to work for a garden designer and finally himself designed gardens. In 1977 he founded together with his wife Anja in Haarlem a company for garden design and the company Future Plants, ornamental plants for parks and green spaces breeds .. A visit to Beth Chatto in Essex encouraged him to run even a nursery. The couple opened in 1982 in Hummelo in Gelderland, the ornamental nursery De Koesterd. Plants they moved initially by Ernst Pagels in East Frisia and of Beth Chatto. Later Oudolf chatted own experimental fields, which were managed by a local farmer and accumulated in the Balkans plant seeds.

The operation was concluded on November 15, 2010. Oudolf lives with his wife in a farmhouse from the 1850s, they have renovated. Since then he has worked only as a garden designer.

Style

Oudolf was initially strongly influenced by Mien Ruys, turned around 1990 but a more natural style ( " New wave planting "). The prairie plantings of the North American New Perennial style of Wolfgang Oehme, and ecological gardens in Hermannshof in Weinheim and Weihenstephan were the inspiration here. The Hesmerg - garden is at the transition between his early and later style. His current style is described as " new naturalism " (New Naturalism ). He calls Rick Darke's " The Encyclopedia of Grasses for livable landscapes" as his favorite book. John Brookes places it in the tradition of Karl Foerster.

Oudolf uses in his gardens mainly grasses and shrubs. Grasses bring him spontaneity and wildness in the garden. He sees a garden not as a decoration, but as a process. Its gardens are to act all year round, even in winter. Perennials with dramatic seed heads are therefore preferred planted and not cut back in the fall, and the decay of plant serves him as a design element. Flowering plants are not necessarily in the foreground, but Oudolf attaches great importance to coordinated colors. Although Oudolf colors less important than holding structure can be seen its gardens usually on the characteristic combinations of purple, purple and orange as well as the various shades of brown.

Oudolf is interested in how a garden works as an ecosystem, and how natural plant communities can be replicated here. Color he keeps doing for secondary.

He also uses formal trimmed hedges of yew or Buchsbau neo- formalist style, however, often have a wavy completion ( Hummelo, Thews - garden ) and thereby act looser. This style is now being imitated ad nauseum. In Hummelo he also planted columns clipped yews, Boon - garden large blocks of precisely trimmed yew. Roy Strong called this style "wind chiefes Baroque ". Meanwhile Oudolf both the central yew hedges (1996 ) and the wave-shaped hedges removed at the end of the garden and the lawn through discounts with annual plants replaced (2003) ..

His first English garden was created in 1996 in Bury Court in northern Hampshire as a display garden of John Coke's Nursery Green Farm Plants. He should lead the customer the variety of plants on offer and their possible uses in mind. Thus, the garden is very unusual for Oudolf, because it contains a lot more different kinds than he usually uses in his recent work. The garden includes a pond and a small gravel garden. The garden was unusual for the English, as it contained a lot of grasses - Miscanthus, Lawn Schmiele and the spring grass Stipa gigantea. For Tim Richardson it marks the moment in which the pioneering rigor of modernism was softened by the lure of big flower faces and naturalistic sensibilities, while the English tradition of the romantic country garden was attacked. The garden was a magnet for English, who was interested in modern garden design. The nursery closed in 2004, since then the garden is only a few days a year to the public.

Most gardens Oudolfs are in the maritime -influenced climate in Western Europe and the United States. However, he has created and Mediterranean gardens, including a garden in Barcelona (2007 ), where he worked primarily with cypress trees and grasses. Noel Kingsbury sees this as a long overdue introduction of modern gardens in the Mediterranean area, where still the " overtook Neoclassicism 'can not dominate.

Fixed installations often use circular paths, as in Hummelo and Bury Court, Round of water, as in the 1996 Thews landscaped garden in Schleswig -Holstein banks ( Einköping ) or round discounts, like in Bad Driberg or the newly landscaped garden in Hummelo.

Plant

Oudolf likes to use tall grasses such as lawn Schmiele, whistling grasses, autumn grass head. Among the shrubs he prefers Red Wasserdost, hat, fat hen, catnip, Kerzenknöterich, Kleinblütiger Foxglove and Large Astrantia. He introduced many plants of the North American prairie to Europe, particularly the popularity of the coneflower is due to him. Even the annoying neophyte gold diamond propagated by him as a garden plant.

Oudolf usually planted perennials and grasses 70 % high and 30 % low flowering plants as " Füllpflanzen ".

Reception

In the English-speaking world was Oudolf, the text largely comes primarily through the book " Designing with Plants" by the British garden writer Noel Kingsbury, Posted. The conservative historian Robin Lane Fox compares Oudolfs style but with the edge of motorways and finds him suitable only for industrial wasteland. There were too few flowering plants present, and he neglect to care for beauty. The Wall Street Journal called him the " rock star " among garden designers. For the garden designer Thomas Rainer Nostalgia is the defining element in the design of oudolfschen gardens. John Brookes classified him along Henk Gerritsen, Ton ter Linden, Penelope Hobhouse, Nori and Sandra Pope as a " colorist ", whose gardens through attention to ecological concerns and combinations of vegetable dyes, " often to the exclusion of all other plant characteristics such as shape, leaf shape, leaf structure, fruit and seasonal aspects " distinguished. Brookes keeps this style is not suitable for England. It was made ​​popular especially by photographers, but is difficult to imitate for the average gardener.

Gardens

Germany

• Bad Driburg
• The Berne Park, Bottrop- Ebel, together with the architectural firm of David Terfrüchte and partners and Gross Max

Republic of Ireland

• Cork Country Garden, 5500 m²

Italy

• Il Giardino delle Vergini, Venice 2010, 2000 m² together with Kazuyo Sejima

Netherlands

• Boon Garden, Oostzaan, 2000, 2500 m²
• Hesmerg Garden, Sneek, 350 m². The garden of a terraced house is divided by a central strip with boxwood squares. He has severely trimmed hedges, a rectangular lawn and a path system made ​​of bricks, which, despite the rich planting an elongated Discounts gives him a very formal style.
• Private Garden in Hummelo, from 1982, 10,000 m², can be visited as the scene of his nursery garden
• Mahler, Amsterdam
• Van Abe Museum, Eindhoven
• Witteveen garden, Rotterdam

Sweden

• City park in Enköping 1996-2003, 4000 m²
• Perennparken on Skärholm, Stockholm 2012, 7500m ², with Stefan Mattson Svenska Bostäder.

USA

• Highline, New York
• Garden of remembrance, Battery Park.

• Lurie Gardens, Millennium Park, Chicago, a roof terrace.

United Kingdom

• Bury Court, Hampshire 1996-1998
• Scampston Hall, Yorkshire in 2004
• Millenium Garden in Pentsthorpe in Fakenham, Norfolk
• Potter 's Field Park, South Bank between Tower Bridge and City Hall, London. 2007
• Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London 2012
• RHS Wisley
• Serpentine Gallery, Hyde Park, London 2012

Works

• With Michael King: Gardening with Grasses. London, Frances Lincoln 1998 ( German: New garden design with perennials and grasses 2007, ISBN 978-3-8001-4935-3 ).
• Designing with Plants. Timber Press, 1999.
• With Henk Gerritsen: Planting the Natural Garden. Timber Press, 2003.
• With Noel Kingsbury: Planting Design. Gardens in Time and Space. Timber Press 2005 ( Eng.: plant design, new ideas for your garden ).
• With Henk Gerritsen Dream Plants for the Natural Garden. Frances Lincoln, 2011.
• With Noel Kingsbury: Landscapes in Landscapes. Thames and Hudson, London, 2011.

Species

• Salvia " Purple Rain "
• Stachys officinalis " Hummelo "

Awards

• Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show with Arne Maynard: Best Garden Award 2002.
• Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund Price 2013.