Piet Oudolf in Chicago
Last night Judy and I went to a lecture given by the noted author, plantsman and garden designer Piet Oudolf. The talk was sponsored by the Lurie Garden, which is appropriate because the Lurie was Oudolf’s first commission in North America.
The presentation was an overview of his career starting with the creation of his nursery in Hummelo, the Netherlands. It included slides of Lurie, the High Line in NYC, and other public and private gardens he has worked on. I really can’t summarize what was said, but here are a few things I took away from the experience.
Oudolf’s designs are inspired by nature and its outer forms (eg, types and shapes of plants), but do not seek to replicate a particular natural environment as it existed prior to human intervention.
He believes in “skills, not rules”. In his career, the foremost skill has been the ability to work with plants to create a desired effect. This entails a knowledge of how those plants will behave over time in a variety of environments. This is a highly complex topic requiring years of experience and never fully learned.
Starting early in his career, Oudolf wanted to get beyond the traditional English garden. He had several reasons: a desire for gardens with less control, for giving more attention to garden ecology and less to gardens as “decoration”, etc. Primarily, though, he wanted to do something creative that “came from the inside”, and for him “plants are a medium of self-expression.”
Oudolf gave an interesting account of working on the High Line in New York City. As with the Lurie Garden, he was brought in to collaborate with other designers and architects. His role was to develop the plant palette and fit those plants together. The architects provided him with a narrative for each section of the High Line, and that enabled him to choose which plants were right.
Maintenance and properly trained staff are critically important for public gardens. This includes being able to assess the performance of plants and decide which species should be removed or introduced. He mentioned, for example, that Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium) and Compass Plant (Silphium laciniatum) needed to be removed from Lurie because they were just too aggressive, even though they were wonderful plants.
The cost of maintenance reinforces a more informal approach. Instead of staking a leaning plant, we develop an appreciation of the “elegance” of its relaxed lines. This is one point on which I take issue with Oudolf – leaning plants may be elegant in a big setting like Lurie, but in my home garden I believe in staking.
After the lecture we had dinner and went to a premier showing of a new documentary about the landscape designer Jens Jensen, who pioneered prairie-style landscapes in parks and gardens. That, however, will be covered in another post.
Your head must be spinning with all that plant and landscape information. 🙂 Sounds like a fantastic evening out.
It was a very exciting presentation.
Sounds like a great lecture series! I’ll look forward to hearing more!
First time I got to hear Oudolf in person. Next I want to visit Hummelo in Holland.
Must have been an interesting evening. I like what he has created, and think he is very clever with plants.
He is really outstanding in the field of garden design.
Sounds like a brilliant evening. I have admired his work at The High Line and Lurie Garden. It is an impressive expression of horticultural art. I like a balance somewhere between organized and carefree. It is interesting that rattlesnake master has become too aggressive. I have one plant and have been waiting for it to spread.
I’ve never planted rattlesnake master, it doesn’t really appeal to me. I have cup plant, which is related to compass plant, it does take some effort to keep it in check but not too bad.
Glad you got to hear Oudolf. What a great opportunity.
Yes, it was!
The High Line….you’ve walked it? We squeezed in one last trip to NYC to see it just before moving south. If I remember correctly the last section will be complete this fall.
There’s a similar project underway in Philly that sounds absolutely enormous in scope and when it comes to fruition I’m planning a weekend trip around it. check it out at VIADUCTgreene.org
Unfortunately I haven’t seen it, but Judy did on one of her trips to NYC, and of course she took lots of pictures.
You had a very good evening it seems. I look forward to your comments on Jens Jensen.
I hope you get to see this new documentary about Jensen.
Thanks for sharing this, it’s fascinating. I love the HIgh Line in NYC. Walked the length last summer when it was unbearably hot, but it’s a wonderful space – wish it had been there when I lived in NYC decades ago. It’s exciting to see these creative urban garden spaces.
I still haven’t been there, had to experience it through Judy, but as you can probably tell I spend a lot of time at the Lurie garden – it’s just a few minutes from my office.
Glad you were able to hear Oudolf, I love his designs and really enjoyed seeing his garden, some of my planitng ideas come from him.
I really love many of his gardens, though visiting Hummelo is on my to do list. I aspire to use some of his ideas also, but of course on a much smaller scale.
I’ve never heard of him but I do admire his work.
You would enjoy his gardens, I am sure.
Fascinating. Thanks for the review of the presentation. Lurie Garden does look very painterly to me. As of Thursday afternoon the Rattlesnake Master was still there in spots, I think I saw a Compass Plant too.
Yes, they still have some compass plant and rattlesnake master, so maybe the decision to remove was fairly recent.
What a fantastic experience! must say I’m a bit jealous as I really admire Oudolf’s gardens and often find myself gazing at photos of them for inspiration. How lucky you are to have seen some of his work in person and then to hear him speak about how he created them.
I did feel very lucky, and I also find lots of inspiration in Oudolf’s gardens.
Bet it was very inspiring. I like his approach and incorporate some of his ideas but the planting he usually does is on a completely different scale and this has to be kept in mind as a lot with small gardens go out thinking they can make an Oudolf garden and are disappointed afterwards.
True, you have to keep scale in mind when trying to implement Oudolf’s ideas, I have learned that lesson from personal experience.
Hi Jason, he sounds like someone I would really like to go listen to, particularly due to his ethos of “skills” not “rules”. Hope you managed to grab lots of notes, tips and inspiration that evening!
It was too dark to do much note taking, and I am terrible at taking notes anyway. I’ll just have to make do with what little I can remember.
What an interesting lecture that must have been, his work is fascinating and some of his ideas are years ahead of his time. Some fantastic pics there.xxx
He had a good sense of humor also.
What a great experience in the lecture and movie…looking forward to hearing about that too.
I may get to that tomorrow.
Sounds like a wonderful learning experience!
I’m glad I went.
1. I thought Piet Oudolf was dead and I feel stupid.
2. I’ve read about Jens Jensen and knew he was alive.
3. No rules? I love this man, especially since he is, indeed, alive.
4. I wish I had been there. :o)
Stupid? Don’t be ridiculous. Here’s stupid: once I was visiting an older woman’s home for the first time. There was a prominent picture of a man on the wall. Asked if this was her husband. Not quite: it was the Pope.
LOL
Oh, I’m so jealous! What a treat.
I’m sure you would have enjoyed it.
He spoke when I was in grad school. My professor also was from the Netherlands and shared the same aesthetic for design. It was quite a semester.
It’s funny, isn’t it, that the Dutch and Germans have this reputation for a naturalistic and informal garden style, while the Italians and French are more formal and structured? Seems to run contrary to the national stereotypes.
Thanks for passing on what you learnt from the great man himself, Jason – I’ve printed it out and kept it for my garden design course. Wonderful plantsman and designer – great inspiration. Kind regards
Ursula
Hi Ursula. Glad you thought the post was useful, I really only provided snippets of what Oudolf said.