My first glimpse of Piet Oudolf At Work on Phaidon Press could hardly have happened at a more auspicious time and place.

Imagine this: A bright Saturday afternoon in the Netherlands last September interrupted by sheets of rain.

My wife Troy and I are guests for a casual lunch at Hummelo seated around the work table in the middle of Piet’s home studio. The maestro himself sits in his usual chair, making us buttered rolls with fresh herring and onions picked up that morning in the nearby town of Zutphen.

Anja pops in to say hello and then vanishes off to curl up in the farmhouse with her weekend newspaper.

Piet’s collection of mugs filled with markers and coloured pencils is parked over to the side. There we are, eating our herring at the very wooden table where Piet has sketch by sketch, plan by plan and landscape by landscape, done much to artfully rewild our perception of gardens in the modern public sphere.

Ever the gracious host, Piet offers us more tea and cake. Then after a walk between showers into the fabled front garden with all the grasses radiant, he asks if I’d like to see the new book.

The book is so new, it exists only in digital form. As we gather around his Apple display, Piet intently takes us through the spreads, filled with his sketches, drawings, and evocative photography of his most recent projects, captured over this past decade. He makes running comments all the while.

At 78-years old, Piet has clearly skipped out on retirement to redouble his focus on design work. The difference now is that he selects fewer projects and stays closer to home in Europe (making an exception for his major new public garden in South Korea).

As designer, Piet has always been a solo operation because it suits his temperament. Over the course of the lockdown, he built up a small network of trusted collaborators to oversee the installation phase of his gardens, mindful at this stage in life that his time is limited.

For that reason, I’m all the more appreciative for this return visit to Hummelo after my last trip nearly ten years ago.

His generosity of being and willingness to freely share is vintage Piet, whether it be cake, special seeds plucked fresh from the plant, or insightful stories from the days of the Dutch Wave.

The Unwrapping

In midwinter, I slow read an advance digital copy of the Phaidon book. Such is my way to take in and absorb what now feels like an essential addition to the Oudolf oeuvre.

Seizing the opportunity to learn more, I ask Piet to join me for a virtual talk about the book. We find a window to connect early one Sunday morning in February where we speak for nearly 90-minutes about everything from the Phaidon book to the evolution of his design process, star chefs, his drawing style, and so much more.

Inspired by Piet’s own generosity, I am pleased to share a few clips from our freewheeling conversation, starting with this overview of why Piet felt it important to make this book, and what makes it different.

Back Story

On the surface, At Work picks up where the original monograph Landscapes in Landscapes, cleverly designed by Irma Boom (2010), left off. The new book brings us up to date on his major projects, but it is far more than simply a record.

Each Oudolf book builds upon the cumulative weight of those before it, an archive now dating back over 20-years (longer if you speak Dutch).

Within this past decade, Planting: A New Perspective (2013) is recognized as the definitive explainer of Oudolf’s methodology for planting design, written by close collaborator Nöel Kingsbury. The biography Oudolf Hummelo (2015 and recently updated) traces the absorbing journey of the plantsman’s life.

This is neither of those.

Show not Tell

Right from its plain brown-wrap cover, Piet Oudolf At Work strikes a different chord in how it chooses to show and tell its story.

Oudolf has always been a visual thinker and his creative process is both far more abstract, complex and subtle than can easily be described in words.

So instead of verbiage, At Work visually walks us through each phase of the design process, as the landscapes he envisions in his mind make the creative leap to colour-coded plans on paper.

At Work is his first book to delve into such depth, openly sharing plans in process from nearly 30 projects in the largest collection of his drawings ever published.

Starting Points

While Oudolf’s finished plans have come to be viewed as an art form in their own right, their technical function is to convey precise instructions for the number and positioning of all plant species and groupings within the garden space.

One of the special fold-out inserts in the book shows how the drawings are used to guide the nuts and bolts installation of a full-scale public garden in the architectural wonderland of the Vitra Campus in Germany.

If the drawings are like recipes, it’s an easy flip to the Plant Directory at the back for the full list of ingredients that comprise Oudolf’s international palette of perennials, trees and shrubs.

The Telling

With so much to show, there are also stories to tell.

This is where again At Work traces a different path than its precursors with a more diverse and layered approach to the writing.

Piet likes to joke about how many books he’s authored despite having never written a word himself. The reality is he’s always partnered with wordsmiths like the late Henk Gerritsen and Nöel Kingsbury to articulate his vision, methods and plant palette.

That said, while he speaks English as his second language, Piet has an undeniable knack for coming up with thoughts that dance in the mind like Zen Buddhist koans.

I had to smile when I saw how At Work uses a series of such Oudolfian quotes to frame the chapters, with their staggered type echoing the spatial play of his planting design.

“A garden isn’t a landscape painting that you look at,
but a dynamic process that’s always changing”

One book. Many voices.

At Work presents a series of five essays, each written by a leading luminary related to Oudolf from the realms of landscape architecture, design and horticulture.

There is also an extended interview with Piet conducted by two of Europe’s most influential figures in the art world, each of whom holds a deep interest in his work.

Usual collaborator Nöel Kingsbury steps into a strong supporting role to pen captions and garden profiles as well as a pivotal essay.

In our conversation, Piet refers to the essays as driven by the need to do more. And more it does: From the readers’s perspective, the essays introduce new voices to open up fresh paths of understanding into his work, its evolution and influence on contemporary landscape design.

It is fitting that Piet’s story is told by others because for Piet, it has never been about himself alone. His way of working arises from a close history within a community of like-minded souls, plantspeople, naturalists, artists, philosophers and patrons who challenged and inspired him on the path to greatness.

Substance + style

For just this reason, Piet told me that the first essay by Cassian Schmidt is of particular importance to help people understand not only what he does now, but where it comes from.

Cassian is the Director of Hermannshof in Germany, regarded by many as the leading-edge naturalistic public garden in Europe. His own approach to ecological design is academically grounded in plant science and sociology in contrast to Piet’s greater emphasis on aesthetics. Despite these differences, the two have forged a friendship over the past several decades with many plants and ideas trading hands.

Only someone with Cassian Schmidt’s vast plant knowledge and design sophistication could pull together such an insightful analysis of Piet’s methodology and its cultural resonance today.

Insights abound: “Piet’s real achievement is in elevating the work of designing with plants to a whole new level. He has brought perennials back into the consciousness of landscape architecture.”

His introduction also gives us a sense of the man himself, an early riser untouched by his celebrity, who remains curious and approachable. Unlike many designers, “Piet chooses to be an open book” sharing his knowledge and plans with trademark generosity.

Critiquing the critics

Schmidt also calls out criticism of Oudolf for sticking to a certain plant palette, as superficial: “There is so much changing in the internal combinations and details, he keeps pushing his own frontiers”.

Another criticism is that Oudolf only designs grassy meadows. Here Schmidt notes this is more a reflection of how the media portrays his work than his actual projects, many of which like the High Line also feature extensive tree and shrub plantings.

Interestingly, Schmidt questions whether the New Perennial movement was ever really a movement at all. There was never a manifesto or formal association amongst its adherents. He sees it more as the result of, “a common direction or mindset in planting design, combined with an expression through plants that is more naturalistic in some cases, less so in others.”

Fair enough, although I would argue that “movement” is an accurate enough term to describe the generation of designers and gardeners from around the world actively inspired by Oudolf’s work to pursue a more naturalistic path. A movement now supercharged by social media into a global community numbering hundreds of thousands of followers.

The challenge now may be what to call it? In the meantime, New Perennial will have to do.

“All the ideas grew at Hummelo.”

Jonny Bruce is a young English garden prodigy who worked in the Netherlands at specialist organic nursery De Hessenhof. There he befriended Piet and Anja and began to make visits to their nearby private garden at Hummelo.

Bruce provides the plantsman’s perspective in his essay on Piet’s symbiotic relationships with both plants and people and how he developed his plant palette by cultivating relationships with specialist nurseries and growers.

He delivers a crisp, poetic essay that also revisits the Open Days at Hummelo and introduces the members of the original Dutch Wave (which come to think of it, was dubbed a movement).

Nöel Kingsbury consolidates his supporting role with the erudite essay Perennial Perspectives. He knows Oudolf’s work inside-out and the emotional response it generates in the public consciousness.

According to Kingsbury, the secret of Oudolf’s success is, “Piet’s ability to produce plantings that are highly coherent, in the sense that they are readily interpreted by the uninitiated but also sophisticated enough to appeal to connoisseurs of horticultural design.”

He also makes a convincing case that it may ultimately be Piet’s lesser recognized design work with woody plants and trees vs. matrix meadows that will stand the test of time. That will surely confuse future critics!

High Line

Writing on collaboration, vanguard landscape architect James Corner identifies the core of Oudolf’s working style: “Piet, like his gardens, is both a solo act and a collective, a robust confidence and a fluid, open process – a dynamic ecology of imagination”.

The High Line is the result of the landmark collaboration between James Corner Field Operations, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with Oudolf overseeing all aspects of the planting design.

As project lead, Corner has seen firsthand how Piet’s ability to collaborate has driven his greater success: “His work alongside clients, architects, landscape architects, artists, plant nurseries, soil specialists, ecologists, gardeners, and installation and maintenance crews, among others, has led to extraordinarily productive exchanges wherein the whole far exceeds the sum of the parts.”

In the book’s final essay Evolution of a Plantsman, Rosie Atkins, the founding editor of Gardens Illustrated and early supporter, chisels out a diamond-cut synopsis of his history to date: “Piet Oudolf’s career is defined by what he calls his ‘healthy obsession with plants’, and the plant knowledge he has accumulated over the years is the key to his ground-breaking designs”.

I was amazed (and humbled) to find fresh details and twists in Atkin’s portrayal of Piet’s beginnings and gradual ascent to rockstar status as the godfather of the New Perennial movement.

Overall, I was struck by the sheer quality of the writing in the essays – whether the ink flowed from architects, plantsmen, or in the case of Cassian Schmidt, self-translated from the original German.

From an editorial perspective, I did notice how certain salient details crop up from one essay to the next. This did not bother me because each time the context shifts and the editorial overlap helps to ultimately form a more multi-faceted understanding of his life and work.

I also liked how the entire text is subtly annotated to cross-reference with specific drawings or garden profiles. This is a book designed to be read from start to finish and for flipping betwixt and between.

Higher Art

The interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Tino Sehgal brings out yet another side of Oudolf, as viewed through the lens of the contemporary artist.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is the ultra-influential Director of the Serpentine Gallery in London while Tino Sehgal is a Berlin-based artist of German and Indian descent regarded as a leading international figure in the realm of live arts.

In my conversation with Piet, I asked if he considers himself to be an artist and his answer splits the difference between art and gardens.
Tino Sehgal says of Piet’s work: “When you talk about these details and who you work with and the dramaturgy of a garden, that’s a very contemporary way of artistic working…”

Piet notes it was the collaboration on the High Line with Field Operations that kickstarted his breakthrough to higher levels of concept and creativity: “That narrative gave me big ideas about not just doing a garden but creating urban landscapes that could remind you of natural landscapes. From that moment I started to think completely differently about private gardens, landscape, and public gardens.”

He saw them all clearly as landscapes in landscapes.

Piet Oudolf At Work unwraps the mystery of how this one quiet revelation has made all the difference in the world.

 

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Credits Roll:

Thanks to Piet Oudolf for his gardens and friendship
Thanks to his agent Hélène Lesger in Amsterdam for arranging the interview
Thanks to my wife Troy McClure for accompanying me to Hummelo and proof reading this post
Thanks to Cher MacNeill for her oversight in helping me to edit the interview clips
Thanks to Kelly Rhoads, my Zoom producer for The New Perennialist Talks
Thanks to Phaidon for the use of images from the book in the interview