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Maybe yous didn’t know it at the fourth dimension, simply at that place’s a potent take a chance you’ve walked right through Piet Oudolf’second work. The renowned Dutch landscape designer is the mastermind behind more or less of the almost recognizable Eden-similar scenes, from New York City’s High Line Park to the individual gardens of Noma inward Copenhagen. In his novel volume, At Work, readers get a peek into his creative procedure, the inspiration, as well as the techniques that take made him one of the virtually influential figures in contemporary gardening.
In this excerpt, Oudolf discusses the importance of embracing plants at every life phase, including their decay, with art curator Hans Ulrich Obrist too artist Tino Sehgal.
Hans Ulrich Obrist: Piet, it would be swell to hear more near your ain garden at Hummelo [inwards the Dutch state of Gelderland], because I know you’ve left it to change freely amongst the seasons, inward a real organic way. I’ve ever been interested inward the thought of how to negotiate command in addition to non command, or organization in addition to self-system. Was that a methodology that was honed inwards this laboratory of your ain garden?
Piet Oudolf: I’ve always seen gardening as control. You cannot brand a garden without it. Traditional gardening is a separate of super-control of everything that happens in that location. We started to talk over what nosotros could do to make gardens more attractive not only for ourselves simply also equally living things. We plant that the best way was to get out plants to become to seed. We stopped cut back the plants too early on—the skeletons were attractive plenty to leave. At that fourth dimension nosotros didn’t fifty-fifty mean near the birds, only alone most aesthetics too how we could extend this beauty through the seasons. It is not that you lose control, but that you lot get-go to look differently. For person who is not a gardener, it looks uncontrolled, only it’sec not—it’sec merely that yous expect more than yous human activity, rather than acting without thinking. When I started to make populace gardens similar the High Line too the Lurie Garden at Millennium Park, nosotros had to go amongst gardeners in addition to amongst plants that were, both of them, growing as well as developing. We had to come across what would occur, together with I mean that is losing control without losing command, because nosotros take command when necessary. Otherwise it becomes wild. You’re ever looking for the edge of command. If plants are dying, nosotros ask the gardeners what should be done. Maybe this found doesn’t operate anymore because the trees accept grown likewise big. It becomes a dialogue amongst the gardener or possessor well-nigh how nosotros tin can make the garden operate inwards the time to come as well as continue its beauty.
Tino Sehgal: So it’s an aesthetics of a controlled letting-become or an aesthetics of controlled noncontrol. I was inward i of your gardens in Hamm inward November, too I was struck by all these plants that were decaying together with even so yet sculptural. Of form, it’s planned, merely on the other paw it’s a plan to let become of control.
Oudolf: Yes. When I see plants decaying inward a setting similar that, I’k yet struck. A found inwards a particular context tin influence your thought of aesthetics. It’sec like a expert painting: You tin can run into it a hundred times, as well as it notwithstanding touches you. But plants alter, and if you lot don’t command a planting, you lot won’t like it anymore. In 10 years’ time you lot’ll say, they should have done something near this.
Obrist: Your run is ofttimes described equally function of the New Perennial drive. Please say us more than nearly this cause.
Oudolf: It was called the New Perennial movement, together with in close to places the Dutch Wave, because then many people came together inward the 1980s as well as early ’90s amongst the thought that we should do something unlike inwards gardens too populace spaces. It’s non that I don’t role trees and shrubs, because inwards every garden of mine at that place are trees as well as shrubs, but the focus at that time was on perennials. It became a crusade very tardily, as well as they telephone call it one right away because it was copied then much. There have been a lot of books virtually naturalistic planting, particularly since around 2010, merely I mean it all started inward the 1980s. A group of people from Kingdom of the Netherlands, Deutschland, together with England held symposia well-nigh perennial plants for world spaces in addition to their usefulness inwards making gardens more attractive. In the meantime we started to see decay every bit role of gardening, because nosotros began to run across that everything that happens in the garden is inwards the context of the season. You don’t look flowers inwards the winter, in addition to you don’t await decay inward the jump. That is office of the thinking of this crusade, that you lot don’t vacuum your garden every solar day because you think it has to be make clean. You await at your garden, as well as y’all mean, okay, that looks skilful, although it is falling over. We were simply next our ain ideas nigh how a garden should look. We learned to garden with our eyes and senses.
Obrist: When we collaborated on the garden for Peter Zumthor’sec Serpentine Pavilion in London, you lot explained to me the lxx percent rule. There are ii kinds of perennials: structural perennials as well as filler perennials. You said that lxx percentage should live structural too the residuum filler.
Oudolf: Well, it’second not really a dominion. It is more to order that non everything has to demonstrate off. There are plants that come up into flower and and then go dormant in the summertime, similar more or less of the poppies. We telephone call these filler plants, which make full the bottom storey a little, blossom, then disappear. You necessitate them to brand the garden complete.
Excerpted from Piet Oudolf at Work, © 2023 past Piet Oudolf. Reproduced by permission of Phaidon. All rights reserved.
