Fantastic episode, Alexandra. We are preparing to extend the bed at the back of our yard so that it wraps around to provide a natural screen (rather than a fence). I’ve been dreaming about using these principles and your video has made me anxious to start! I can do this! 😊 Cheers!
I really like your work, and I watch many of them over and over again, hoping aspects will sink into my head, meanwhile using a lot in the creation of my two year old garden in a damp rainy climate that I am not used to, coming from the desert south west, trialing plants to see what does what I want, a natural bee friendly environment with a few veggies mixed in. Thanks again for your lovely program!
I love Oudolf's designs so this message is gonna be quite long... The main goal of naturalistic plantings is that it needs to look good all year, even in winter. This was the main change back then : having shapes in winter, and realizing like Piet says, that "brown is also a color". Piet Oudolf carefully designs plans first, with number of plants, surface areas etc... Then people prepare the soil by weeding everything, adding compost etc... and then go in with 2-3 year old perennials in large pots. Now the key is that he has in his mind a list of plants that go well together. He knows which shape or texture will go well with another one. For us mortals it is impossible to do that as well as he does. I remember seeing a youtube video about a woman who took the list of plants that go together at the end of the "designing with plants" book, that's now out of print, and just listed what goes well with what in excel form. I tried to do the same thing, so for each plant you have a list of "Oudolf approved" plants and you can design your garden like that. When you have 2 or 3 plants and you need THAT plant that goes well with the other 3 then it becomes a nightmare. And then you check out other Oudolf books and you realize he uses combinations that aren't listed in the book, the list wasn't complete, it would have been too long otherwise. So that's the issue with this method : Oudolf alone knows the full combinations of plants, and in the books he doesn't want to give it up. Not because he's petty or secretive, but because he would rather people thought by themselves and come up with their own combinations. Except that it takes a lifetime, and people would rather have the full method to create a nice garden the first year. What's interesting is that there's been two main variations from the Oudolf method. The first one is from perennial seeds. It's something that James Hitchmough does. Instead of planting from pots, you sow a carefully designed mix, in a thick layer on sand that you put on the garden (previously prepared and weeded out). It recreates a meadow with dense intermingling. My issue with this method, is that you have to clear out the garden, and source out all this sand. The second variation is what Thomas Rainer does. His conferences are a bit of a headache because he speaks VERY fast. It's hard to grasp the method from his book too. And like Oudolf he doesn't give us enough plants. But I think it's the most promissing. The base is like an Oudolf garden : matrix planting, or block planting. Except that Thomas Rainer fills up the WHOLE space. He puts plants really next to each other, very dense, so that there is no weeding. If a plant is like a vase, and has large stems that create shade, he plants underneath too. Because what people don't understand, and Oudolf is very clear on that, is that an Oudolf garden DOES require a lot of maintenance. His plant spacing isn't that dense. So it needs weeding the first years. Rainer will just fill every single gap, with small carex or geraniums and has a specially designed small pot/cell so that he can have greenhouses filled with them, ready to be used for his projects. It's a whole organization, but I really like the idea. It's more practical, it's about giving these gardens to communities that don't have the budget to maintain all this. Oudolf is more artistic, you need maintenance to achieve his vision. He doesn't care very much about wildlife or root depth etc...although he will adapt to specific conditions of course, but it's more about how it looks and balances out.
When I first saw these new Oudolf gardens I didn't like them very much, but over the years I am liking them more and more. I enjoyed this video, it is quite timely since we are doing quite a large bed from scratch, (Large for us, small compared to the ones on your video) and I am attempting to bring these ideas in, it will be a mediterranean/ naturalistic/ cottage conglomeration... or abomination, time will tell! The plants are about 10 cm tall currently, Spring in Australia! So by the end of summer we may have something! When you are in Australia next we would like to invite you to visit!
We also have wet winter and dry summers here in Northern California Humboldt county by the Sea and Redwoods. Thank you for this video. 🙌💚🌿 good information.
