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.
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.
Grassendaggen: A Fall Epiphany at Hummelo
There comes a moment in every voyage when you know you’ve arrived. And that’s how I felt on my first-ever visit to the private dream garden of Piet and Anja Oudolf on ‘Grass Days’, one Saturday morning in early September 2009.
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.
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.