Oudolf asks us to look beyond our fixation with flowers to appreciate the full life cycle and drama of the planting itself - in all its four seasons and stages of growth. This is a naturalistic approach that reflects Oudolf’s fascination with how plant communities thrive in the wild - both in terms of ecology and as a guiding aesthetic. Bumblebee visits Stachys officinalis ‘Hummelo’ The effect is further enhanced by the buffering effect of ornamental grasses. This frees Oudolf from the dictums of colour theory so that he can mix many different colours without much danger of them clashing.

He places less emphasis on colour, favouring small, less profuse flowers that are akin to their wild cousins. He starts with plant selection, preferring robust and long-flowering plants with a wild character, turning his plantsman’s eye to the proportions between flower, seed head, leaf and stem and to the balance between form and texture. Oudolf’s root inspiration is nature itself. Oudolf has reinforced Wade’s effect of separation with a screen of perennials that masks the mass of plantings behind, so that the full impact of the garden is revealed only when you walk up onto the sidewalk and find yourself completely surrounded by plants.

Oudolf makes ingenious use of hedges, levels and plant curtains, or screens, to create an air of mystery that blocks out the outside world and entices the viewer to come inside and explore.įor example, at the TBG, architect Martin Wade has elevated the front of the walkway planting and faced it with a concrete wall to separate it from the parking area. Here’s some of what I’ve discovered on my journey. Seven years on, I’ve come to a far deeper understanding of some of the key principles of naturalistic planting design that Oudolf uses in the Entry Garden Walk (or Piet’s Garden as Horticulture Director Paul Zammit calls it). The serpentine journey has taken me into Oudolf’s books and his gardens, and to the Netherlands twice and back. Looking back over the symphonic meadow w/ Echinacea ‘Vintage Wine’ and Perovskia ‘Little Spire’ in foregroundĮver since, I’ve attempted to unravel the mystery of its making and decode the guiding principles of the garden’s designer. Seeing the New Perennial planting at the Toronto Botanical Garden for the first time in 2006 was like discovering a Rosetta stone of modern garden design. The day I saw it, the Entry Garden Walk had been newly planted and the perennial beds looked like an immense puzzle, with each plant poking up its head like a clue. Breaking the Design Code behind Piet Oudolf’s Entry Garden Walk