The Gardener’s Speech: Bringing the High Line Home

This past Monday, the Parkdale Toronto Horticultural Society invited me to speak on a highly prescient theme: Bringing the High Line Home. It was a stellar opportunity to talk about the New Perennial planting style and my recent design workshop experience in the Netherlands. I presented a photographic odyssey of Piet Oudolf’s work intertwined with

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Piet Oudolf: Royal Recognition at Home

On Monday November 11, Queen Máxima awarded the Prince Bernhard Culture Prize 2013 to garden and landscape designer Piet Oudolf. This lifetime achievement award is given annually to a person or institution who have contributed something exceptional to the cultural fabric of the country.

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Garden Design Goes Native

A new movement of native planting advocates is showing us how we can help sustain the matrix of biodiversity upon which all life depends – including our own.

To delve deeper, I spoke with Toronto ecological designer and former wild plant nursery owner Charles Kinsley to learn how urban gardeners can create and sustain a native garden.

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Piet Oudolf: In his own Words

Click on the magic box below to transport yourself to the Netherlands and meet Piet in conversation in his home garden at Hummelo. I cannot recommend this excellent video highly enough. Dutch Profiles: Piet Oudolf from Dutch Profiles on Vimeo.

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Dutch Master: Piet’s Garden at the TBG

Seeing the New Perennial planting at the Toronto Botanical Garden for the first time 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.

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