There comes a moment in every voyage when you know you’ve arrived. And that’s how I felt on my first-ever visit to the private dream garden of Piet and Anja Oudolf on ‘Grass Days’, one Saturday morning in early September 2009.
I knew the place well – but only through the well-thumbed pages of books. So it felt quite unreal to find myself out in the actual Dutch countryside near the tiny village of Hummelo – walking up the cobbled front lane to the low-slung brick farmhouse of ‘Kwekerij Oudolf’.
For many years, the Oudolfs traditionally opened their private garden and ‘Kwekerij’ or nursery, to the public twice each Fall for Grassendaggen. The local Dutch citizenry came out in force for the event and to pick up choice perennials or specialist bulbs and hand-forged garden tools from local vendors at the Oudolf nursery out back. Why not? They’re absolutely crazy mad for all things plants! Something we have in common.
Into the Wild Sublime
I’d picked my moment well. September is an ideal time to visit the garden to experience the prairie grasses and late-flowering perennials in their full fall glory. Beyond that though, it was an opportunity to experience Oudolf’s design aesthetic at perhaps its most personal – this garden is surely the crucible of his artistry.
The photos in this post represent only a fraction of what I saw that day: a garden of phantasmagorical beauty and sublime evocative power that presents shifting perspectives with each step you take. The weather that day was everchanging with gusts of rain and moments of quiet serenity.
It was a kind of pilgrimage that led me to his garden gate – to see and experience this place with my own eyes. I’d previously visited a number of his gardens in North America – and on this same trip to Europe, I caught his Glasshouse Borders at the RHS Gardens at Wisley and Potter’s Field by Tower Bridge in London.
At Hummelo, still bedazzled after my visit to his garden out front, I introduced myself to Mr. Oudolf, after spotting his tall figure and silver sweep of hair behind a tall screen of miscanthus grass by the nursery. He looked me in the eye, warmly took my outstretched hand in both of his and graciously invited me, a virtual stranger from Canada, into the heart of the conversation.
Talking Plants
When I mentioned I was from Toronto, he was immediately curious. “How is the garden?” he asked, alluding to the Entry Walk Garden at the Toronto Botanical Garden which he’d designed some five years before.
“It’s certainly taken off.” I replied. “Some things much more than others, with a lot of self-seeding from the Knautia and Calamagrostis Brachytricha.” Piet cocked an eyebrow and said, “Every garden needs a guiding hand.” This sparked a full-blown discussion about the need to anticipate maintenance at the design phase but also how the gardener’s role is to sustain the integrity of the original design. That takes real knowledge and time – something not every garden can promise.
Right from this first meeting, I could sense Piet’s complete respect for everyday gardeners. And his passion for inspiring us through his work. There was no feeling of a separation – instead an instant rapport borne from our mutual love of plants. Quite unawares, I’d wandered into a powerful vortex of creativity.
For me, it was simply too fascinating to discuss plant matters with the man whose books have helped to reignite my love of plants and design. A few minutes later into the conversation, my girlfriend’s tap on the shoulder told me it was time to take our ride and return to Deventer where we were staying. What a diamond of a day!
Windmills of Change
Since this first visit, much has changed at Hummelo. The fabled nursery is now shuttered and seeded over with a lush wildflower meadow. The private garden has relaxed its schedule and is now open to the public for viewing on certain days of the week right from midsummer into late fall.
One thing is constant. Piet Oudolf, the creative force behind the garden remains as vibrant as ever, working in solitude on a stream of international projects in his modernistic brick and glass studio round back. Always inventive, he is also busy cooking up extraordinary new cultivars in his personal trial beds around the corner. His effusive wife, Anja is now free to welcome visitors and run the front of the house after presiding over the nursery business for all those many years.
In 2009, the bones of the garden still included the iconic wave hedging and yew pillars, which for many years stood as living minimalist sculpture and focal points dotted throughout the front garden. Their architectural presence provided a powerful counterpoint to the wildness of the planting.
They exist no more. Two years after my visit, Piet removed all the hedges with chainsaws after they were killed off by a combination of winter flooding and subsequent disease.
Rather than mourn their absence, Piet embraced this as an opportunity to reconfigure the lower garden and its vistas in a whole other way. Now the wild perennials and sweeps of grasses fleck the gardenscape like an expressionist canvas where the paint never dries.