Piet Oudolf - Planting the Natural Garden

Dear AnjaPLANTING THE NATURAL GARDENPiet Oudolf & Henk Gerritsen Edited by Noel Kingsbury Part I
Plant Descriptions Part II
Uses Part III
Planting Plans & Combinations Liatris spicata Alba in the Lurie Garden, Chicago Perennials. There is no doubt that they are the mainstay of the modern garden. There is a huge variety available, from garden centers, online mail order nurseries, and small specialists. But this was not always the case. This book was first published in 1990 and at that time its authors, Henk Gerritsen and Piet Oudolf, were very much having to make the case for perennials. Dream Plants, as it was originally titled in Dutch, was about promoting perennials, and a particular range of them, to a public who actually knew very little about them.

So, in this introduction we are going to look at the world of the 1980s and 1990s and see how far we have come. We will look at various developments that have taken the range of plants that Henk and Piet wrote about back then and carried them forward, as well as at developments that have increased the range of perennials we have access to for our gardens and public spaces. We will also look at our criteria for including plants, which really is another way of looking at how and why we make gardens and grow plants. In updating this book we have inevitably dropped certain plants, generally because related species or cultivars have come along that are better. We have added quite a few, largely to reflect the 25-plus years of perennial introductions and breeding since the first edition. These additions also reflect the change in the nature of Piets work.

Back in 1990 he was an up and coming garden designer who also ran a small nursery with his wife Anja, primarily to grow plants for his own practice. No one outside the Netherlands had heard of him. Now of course, he is internationally famous as a designer not just of private gardens, but of parks and other public spaces too. Creating spaces like this inevitably has an impact on plant selection, particularly in directing a focus to reliable low-maintenance varieties. Before we move on, we had better consider Henk. Henk Gerritsen was an artist, garden designer, and ecological activist who had moved out to the relatively remote eastern region of the Netherlands, with his partner, Anton Schlepers, a photographer.

In 1978 they laid out a garden, known as the Priona Gardens, very experimental in character, largely inspired by the wild plant communities they had enjoyed on their travels in Central Europe. Together the two men wrote a book, Spelen met de natuur (Playing with Nature), about their experiences travelling to look at wildflowers and their attempts at bringing their discoveries into the garden. Henks discovery of Piets nursery plant list led to many more discoveries: because I attempt to keep the gardens as natural and wild as possible, these plants have fitted in perfectly. The Henk-Piet relationship was very much a mutual one, as it was Henk who introduced Piet to the idea of seed heads and the autumn appearance of perennials. With Henk, Piet says, I learnt that planting is to do more with plants: ambience, seasonality, emotion, these are important; with Henk we discovered plants that were good out of flowering, he pointed this out to me a hundred times, we looked at plants at times other than their prime time. When publisher Terra asked Piet to write a book in 1989, he realized that writing was not something he found easy, so he asked Henk to help, and the first edition of Droomplanten was born.

Anton did much of the original photography and Henk wrote the text huddled over an electric fire during the cold winter of 19891990. The publication in 1990 of Droomplanten launched a novel and distinct perennial selection into the world. A Swedish edition came remarkably quickly and nine years later another book, Mr Droomplanten (More Dream Plants). The latter was published in English in 2000 as Dream Plants for the Natural Garden, with the original Droomplanten appearing as Planting the Natural Garden in 2003. Anton died in 1993 and Henk cared for Priona until his death in 2008, keeping it open to the public as a provocatively unconventional garden; not everyone gets it, I remember Henk complaining to me several times. After a gap of some years, the Priona Gardens are now publicly accessible again, as the backdrop to a rather contemporary restaurant, so it is still possible to experience Henks creative and gently eccentric approach to gardening.

There is a clear love of the wild and naturalistic but also enough hedging and framing to remind the visitor that this is after all a Dutch garden. Henks abstract expressionist approach to yew clipping makes us question our fundamental lack of creativity with this subject matter, while box hens and chickens on the main lawn add a humorous touch a dry wit underlay Henks approach to life, especially his writing about perennials. That is why we have chosen to keep some of Henks favorite plants in the list, even though they are not relevant in Piets work. Echinacea purpurea Vintage Wine The Priona Gardens, the garden of Henk Gerritsen. Henk Gerritsen, Anja and Piet Oudolf at one of the Open Days at Hummelo

Looking back to the latter decades of the 20th century, the era which gave rise to the original Dream Plants, perennials were very much a minority interest. The garden center had rather taken over from the traditional local or mail order nursery, and what they sold were mostly shrubs.

The perennials would appear in spring, as bareroot plants in little plastic bags in Britain at any rate. Things were at a similarly low ebb in the Netherlands too, whose most productive nursery industry was similarly shrub focused. Swedens rich early and mid 20th century gardening tradition had been largely forgotten. In the US, there had been a brief flowering of interest in perennials and in particular of the countrys rich native flora in the 1920s. Postwar however, the stifling conformity of the lawn seems to have suppressed most other expressions of horticulture. Germany was probably the best place for perennials.