The Field Trip: A Perennial Summer Adventure

A friend once told me over a beer and frog legs in Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Travel is not about the places – it’s about the people you meet.

So true.

Now home after several whirlwind weeks on the road, I’m taking a breather to retrace my steps.

It all started with a visit to Baltimore, Maryland in late July for my first annual Perennial Plant Association (PPA) Symposium.

Next, my partner Troy and I buckled up for a 10-day road trip to Québec driving out along the silver-laced shores of the St. Lawrence Seaway to visit a pair of much revered gardens: Les Jardins de Métis and Les Quatre Vents.

And it’s true – what stands out is not the to-die-for lobster poutine from Chez Mamie in Québec, or the softshell crab fresh from Chesapeake Bay I devoured in Baltimore.

It wasn’t even the sight of the phantasmal tower of Le Pigeonniere at Les Quatres Vents in Charlevoix.

Or the majestic sweeps of Filipendula rubra at Les Jardins de Métis .

Nope. It was all about the people I met along the way. In this case, a wildly diverse bunch of folks drawn together from all point of the globe by a kindred passion/obsession for all things growing.

(And truth be told, it was also kinda about the plants.)

Hello Baltimore

I arrived in town as a neon-clad Canadian stranger (oddly wearing the exact shade of orange as the Baltimore Orioles fans cruising into the stadium next door.)

Not a complete stranger though.

Within moments of arrival, I heard a shoutout from Missouri-based designer Adam Woodruff, a mutual friend/devotee of Piet Oudolf whom I’d gotten to know well on our tour of the Netherlands.

In the two years since, his career trajectory has gone supernova but Adam seemed unfazed.

All credit to Janet Draper, the hyper-energetic horticulturist who organized the symposium (photo credit John Boggan.)

I also met Adam’s friend and protégé, the goofily serious plantsdude Austin Eischeid from Iowa who’s done some major European voyages of his own.

Before long, I started to not only encounter but get to know a steady stream of fascinating individuals amongst the 800-strong attendees (thank gawd for name tags.)

The Symposium kicked off the next day at the Hilton with a heavyweight list of speakers assembled – notably for me, German planting design luminary Cassian Schmidt, director of Hermannshof, and legendary American plantsman Roy Diblik of Northwind Perennial Farm – both pushing the creative frontiers of naturalistic planting.

These were the folks I’d come to see.

I was not disappointed. Cassian’s keynote address, delivered with a clipped german accent, painted a powerfully detailed vision of his experiments with planting design at Hermannshof. These are the trial grounds where he’s successfully fused artistry and horticulture with the skill of an alchemist and keen observer of natural habitats.

I could hear audible gasps and murmurs in the darkened theatre with each new image in his stunner of a slideshow. (This image is from my visit there two years back.)

The New German Style

The style is certainly more exciting than the name might indicate.

On the final day, Cassian gave a second talk focused on public planting strategies in the New German Style entitled, ‘Formulaic and Assessed Mixed Perennial Plantings – A New Way of Bringing Perennials Back Into the City’. (No doubt in German, there’s a single word for this entire concept.)

The substance of the talk is quietly revolutionary: epitomized in public projects like The High Line in NYC, which to a degree, was inspired by the ‘wild’ prairie matrix plantings at Hermannshof.

In Germany, Cassian has been instrumental in creating a series of sustainable garden modules for public plantings, which are relatively simple to install and maintain, comprised of a plant palette matched by habitat and capable of withstanding severe urban conditions.

Essentially, each module is comprised of a formularized mix of perennials, which can be planted in a randomized pattern on site. No planting plan is required, making it a cost-effective solution for introducing a vibrant garden community wherever required in the urban landscape.

They’re just starting in Germany but it holds incredible promise. He showed concrete examples of the style, in this case designed by his no-less brilliant wife/ landscape architect, Bettina Jaugstetter as seen in the image below.

Fields of Dreams

Sporting his trademark baseball cap and grizzled white beard, Roy Diblik took the stage with his midwestern rumble of a voice for a gentle discussion about plants.
He spoke about the need to understand plants as living entities, which have existed for thousands of years. And to realize they thrive at their best when grouped intimately together in thoughtful, healthy, living communities.

It’s a central theme of his excellent how-to book ‘The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden’ on Timber Press.

Like Piet, Roy’s been a plantsman for 30 plus years. He worked with Piet to expand the native plant palette for seminal project, The Lurie Gardens in Chicago. He’s also introduced important and useful plants to gardeners like 2014 Perennial Plant of the Year, Panicum v. ‘Northwind’, Sporobolus ‘Tara’, and Allium ‘Summer Beauty’.

Like no one else, Roy struck a deep nerve with his heartfelt emotional plea for creating a deeper role for plants in a society increasingly isolated from nature. He envisions a shift towards a plant-driven culture where gardening is seen as a joy, not a labour.

In his design work, he cites painterly influences like Impressionist Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. For Roy, the key is how to choose the plant in the first place. Here’s a great introduction to his native-leaning plant palette.

Over the next few days, I’d discover far more about these remarkable plantsmen and how closely their lives and work are intertwined.

The New American Garden Style: Revisited

Baltimore proved to be an inspired pick for the 33rd Annual PPA host city.

After all, this region served as ground zero for the revolutionary New American Garden style, which introduced the idea of massive sweeps of prairie-style perennials and ornamental grasses to American gardens in the late 1970s.

This pivotal movement was spearheaded by iconoclastic landscape architects Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden, partnering with Swiss nurseryman Kurt Bluemel and Richard Simon who supplied them with the thousands of perennials and grasses featured in their work.

Clearly, this collective spawned and tutored a new generation of designers and growers to advance their ideas – many of whom were sitting in the audience beside me.

Eric Groft of Oehme, van Sweden & Associates Washington, DC gave an illuminating talk on that very theme, ‘OvS – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’.

In fact, you could have shot an arrow back in time all the way to Karl Foerster in post-war Germany – the forefather of naturalistic garden design in Europe and early champion of the all-season potential of ornamental grasses in the garden.

Ecological designer, Claudia West from North Creek Nurseries did just that with her talk ‘How Perennials Changed our World’ – delivering an impassioned presentation on the history and influence of Karl Foerster as gardener, plantsman,writer, and philosopher.

She also dug up a rare East German propaganda film featuring Foerster as an old sage promising an utopian communist society filled with gardens and flowers.

That, of course never happened. But his influence has been enormous – even without a single one of his many books ever being translated into english.

Surely, his plant introductions are the seeds of his immortality… Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ anyone?

Outside lies magic

The symposium was one thing. But the afterhours were all about the people.

Each night, I seemed to find myself squeezed into a taxi with a bunch of folks heading out to eat somewhere off the beaten track.

First night out, we went to the very steampunk Woodbury Kitchen with an all-American group of designers including Barbara Katz and Tom Mannion, Adam and Austin, Naomi Brooks from New York, and Roy Diblik.

(Special shoutout to Barbara Katz for lugging along the iron broadfork I’d mailed to her for pick-up in the U.S.)

On the second night, I ended up again at Woodbury Kitchen seated across from Roy and Cassian Schmidt. I was delighted to learn that Cassian had not only read my blog, he loved my take on Hermannshof and the German football team. Importantly for me, I got the details right.

Cassian and Roy are old friends and we talked about such things as how I could become a prairie whisperer for my Mono meadow garden, native plant survival strategies, and Cassian’s upcoming road trip down the eastern seaboard for some family plant-hunting.

Our common link was the man himself, Piet Oudolf.

Right down the same table, there was Austin chatting with Jeff Lynch from fabled Chanticleer while Bettina Jaugstetter talked up a storm in english and german with Claudia West.

And yes, the soft-shelled crab was pretty damned delectable.

Variations of these groups continued to talk for four days straight, after talks, during meals and all the way through a bus trip to visit local gardens – joined by a constantly changing parade of designers, writers and growers.

The conversations were so rich, I plan to reserve some of the indepth exchanges with Cassian, Bettina, and Roy for future posts.

Perennial of the Year

In the symposium itself, I spotted other legends of the perennial tribe like favourite writer/ethicist Rick Darke and plantsman/author Dr. Allen Armitage.

Susan Harris of Garden Rant renown, whom I also had the pleasure to meet, did a much better job than I of covering the main event.

Interestingly, I also met a lot of Dutch Dreamers from the Facebook group I started two years ago – and which is now 1,200 members and growing.

The coda for the symposium was sweet indeed with one of my dream heirlom plants for the late-summer garden named Perennial Plant of the Year for 2016.

Here’s to you: Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’. And so long Baltimore, it’s been swell.

— Next post: The road trip continues in Québec…