Hermannshof: The German Genius for Goals and Gardens

Yes, they did it again. In early July, under the blinding stadium lights in Rio, Germany conquered Argentina with a soaring pass and mid-air kick to win the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The German team was so strong, the win seemed almost inevitable.

On a whirlwind visit to Germany last summer, I discovered they also make seriously innovative public gardens – and much like football, their greatness is no accident.

Each is the result of a highly diligent work ethic, meticulous research and planning, creativity, and a genius for practical innovation. One garden unites all these elements together into one exquisitely satisfying whole, while the other radically deconstructs them into something perhaps more strange than merely beautiful.

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Netherlanders III: The Oudolf Effect

My first glimpse of Rotterdam was a blast of pure future shock.

Walking out of the concrete slab and webbed glass roof of the Centraal train station, the cityscape comes on like a massive architectural experiment gone wild.

Now down to the final few days of my trip, I’d come south in mid-July to visit two of Piet Oudolf’s most recent public projects in the Netherlands. While these gardens express some of his latest design thinking, they’re not yet so well known to the outside world.

A powerful juxtaposition of nature recast in a hypermodern urban frame.

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The Netherlanders II: Gardens of Art and Obsession

Few tourists think to visit Groningen, the northernmost capital of the Netherlands.

My tattered copy of Lonely Planet lists the main local activity in the sparsely populated region as wadlopen or mud-walking out in the open flats of the North Sea. They also mention something about pig farms.

From what I saw, they’re missing out. Because Groningen also happens to be an ideal base from which to explore an alternate universe of garden design. And that’s exactly what we set out to do last July on the ‘Gardens Illustrated Tour of the Dutch Northern provinces ‘ led by English garden writer, Noel Kingsbury and his wife, Jo Elliott.

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Meeting the Netherlanders I: Plants, Places, People

In late June, I left my patch of Canadian woodland far behind to travel overseas to the Netherlands and Germany. I was a gardener on a mission to meet some luminaries of contemporary Dutch planting design and explore their gardens and nurseries in my version of a midsummer night’s dream. Above all else, this trip was about the chance to again meet visionary Dutch planting designer, Piet Oudolf on his home turf …

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Grassendaggen: A Fall Epiphany at Hummelo

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.

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