Who is piet oudolf

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Society Rights Politics. Gender Activism Coronavirus. Home Lifestyle How Piet Oudolf, master of spontaneous gardens, became the best landscape designer in the world. How Piet Oudolf, master of spontaneous gardens, became the best landscape designer in the world. Related articles. Can we still call it that? Lifestyle 12 july by Frida Doveil. Amah Ayivi, the Togolese designer creating high fashion with discarded clothes.

Milan Fashion Week goes digital. Japan leads the way in accessible tourism. Travel 30 june Coronavirus 20 may The coronavirus in the Amazon is an existential threat to indigenous peoples. But his most famous work, and the one which propelled him to prominence outside of horticultural circles, is the planting of the High Line, a 1. As he became widely known, the demand for his services grew. His wife Anja, who had taken over the nursery, kept the home fires burning, leaving Oudolf free to make gardens.

But the number of visitors to Hummelo increased exponentially, and the couple made the decision to close the nursery some years ago, and opened the garden for the final time in October The old stock and trial beds may be gone, but the spaces around the buildings are still living experiments where Oudolf tries out plants, and in his studio — an imposing modern structure at one end of the garden — he continues to develop ideas.

The clean white room is sparsely but succinctly furnished, with a drafting table in one corner and computer in the other. On shelves around the room, hard hats rub up against vinyl figurines by street artists, and sun-bleached plant books sit alongside rows of classical music CDs. In the centre is a large table with various pots and containers of coloured markers, pencils and felt-tip pens, where Oudolf sketches out his planting plans, and can look out to the garden and surrounding farmland through floor-to-ceiling windows.

In the recent documentary Five Seasons, of which Oudolf is the subject, we see him pulling over the car while on a road trip in America, captivated by the spring wildflowers on the verge. Elsewhere in the film, he visits a prairie restoration project. Despite this, Oudolf is not, he insists, trying to replicate these places in his work — only the reactions they provoke, by translating that magical atmosphere into human-scale spaces. It has to be attractive to people — it is all about aesthetics.

I put plants on a stage and let them perform. Whether big or small, public or private, all of his schemes begin with a palette of plants, based on the project site and brief, with a view to extending the interest across the seasons.

Limiting this selection is, he says, the most difficult part of his work. It needs to have character, and perform from the moment it comes out of the ground, so with the leaf, then the flower and how it dies down or goes dormant in a beautiful way. Then, you have to be strategic in where you put your plants, so it looks good at the end. He believes a deep knowledge of plants is the basis of his success, and recommends that new designers forging their way in the industry should invest time in learning about the material.

It is these public projects, he admits, that he enjoys the most. When you enroll at My Garden School , an online school where you can take courses with all manner of experts.

In , Oudolf designed the garden. For more photos, see Telegraph. We recently reviewed Mr. Search for:. Here are eight Piet Oudolf gardens with ideas worth stealing: Hamm, Germany: Maximilianpark Above: In Hamm, Germany, Maximilianpark was formerly a coal mine, now transformed into gardens, play spaces, and a sanctuary for pollinators.

Oudolf designed this sweep of wildflower meadow.