Ah. Welcome to the New Perennialist Theatre. Your seat is waiting. We have three remarkable art films ready for viewing – two short and the third is feature length.
Admission is free. Popcorn is strictly optional. Leave your secateurs at the door.
Deep
The first short film comes from Italy and takes us deep inside Piet Oudolf’s impressionist mood plantings created for the Giardino delle Vergini at the über-prestigious 2011 Venice Bienale. Piet serves as narrator and he’s as pithy and wryly observant as ever. The message is rather timeless, the plantings are celestial – and I happen to know this brief film carries his personal stamp of approval.
Deeper
The second film, entitled ‘Piet Oudolf’ by Jan Pieter Tuinstra is something of a dutch mystery and the cinematography is sublime. Shot entirely in dutch without subtitles, it offers a compelling glimpse into the inner world of the dutch master as he roams his home garden in Hummelo. The images transcend any need for language.
Deepest
Our third film is a very recent release – traveling back in space and time to tell the full story of the Dutch Wave and the New Perennial Movement. There’s no better person to tell it than garden writer extraordinaire, Noel Kingsbury captured here in fine form at the newly-opened Hauser & Wirth art space, out in the countryside of Somerset, England.
This is the first time the inside story has been fully told – the fruit of the most recent collaboration between Oudolf and Kingsbury. Yet to be confirmed, I think this may also be the subject of their next book together – a personal history of how it all came to be.
Hauser & Wirth Somerset opened its doors earlier this summer with an exhibition of Piet’s planting design drawings, artistic creations in their own right. Right now in September, they’re officially opening a new Oudolf garden in the grounds in and around the gallery, freshly planted in spring this year. Well worth a visit next time in England.
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One last dutch treat
A brand new version of the Piet Oudolf design site just launched today at www.oudolf.com. Highly pictorial with excellent visual profiles of all major public and private gardens to date.
Stay tuned for my next post. More explorations of the perennial kind overseas.
Hi Tony,
I was surprised to see the 2 short films. I almost forgot but they are really nice and the second one indeed needs translation. Reading the pictures and missing the quotes is a pity.
Go on with your messages into the world we try to escape with our passion.
Piet
Hi Piet,
So glad you enjoyed the mini-retrospective – and yes, subtitles would be marvellous on the second film. Much thanks for your words of inspiration.
What a treat to receive these wonderful words of wisdom from both Piet and Noel. You do a fantastic job Tony. The New Perennialist makes my fingers itch to get into my garden immediately, and the time is right here in New Zealand. As it is glorious springtime and there are promising cushions of perennials pushing through the ground between my matrix of NZ native tussock grass, Carex buchanii in my tiny perennial meadow.
So different to the time I have just spent in tropical Singapore where orchids grow as naturally as perennials do in Northern Europe and North America. Such diversity.
Great to hear news from the other side of the planet, Robyn. And of course, our seasons are in complete reversal with tinges of fall colour just starting here in eastern Canada. I’m familiar with that Carex – it’s used here as an annual for its unusual dusky brown colouration. NZ is a place high on my list of must-see destinations.
I was interested in your comment that Carex buchanii is used as an annual in Canada, suggesting to me that it won’t withstand your harsher winters. In New Zealand it is evergreen all year round. I am a garden columnist for the garden pages of our local newspaper and have just written a piece about C.buchannii and other NZ natives ‘saving my garden from the muddy bog look over winter’ after perennials have died back. I find the textural quality of NZ native plants a great design foil for the colourful splashes northern hemisphere perennials provide.
Thank you again! I can’t think when I’ve spent a more rewarding hour than with the Noel Kingsbury talk on Oudolf’s influences and the progression of his projects. Hugely useful practical design and planting information as well as sheer inspiration and intellectual stimulation. If this is indeed the basis of a future book, I’m making room for it on the shelf now!