After nearly 40 years of welcoming the world through its gates, the private garden of Piet and Anja Oudolf at Hummelo will close to the public for good at the end of this month.
For all lovers of this most quintessential garden that galvanized an entire movement in naturalistic planting design, the news cuts deep.
Word of its closing has spread like wildfire-weed amongst garden folk and it’s inspired a kind of spontaneous pilgrimage of people visiting Kwekerij Oudolf one last time.
I pursed my lips in quiet victory. At the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. on a Friday morning in April, my trowel and I glided through U.S. Customs to dig into my New Perennial opportunity of the year: a chance to help plant out a Piet Oudolf-designed botanic garden in Delaware.
One week later standing in his future meadow, I had the chance to ask Piet Oudolf himself that most basic of questions: “So Piet, how do you like to plant?”
Here at the cabin, rumours of spring are still buried arctic deep in the frozen ground.
I spy distant traces of the season to come: the rust-tipped tendrils of green moss backlit by the setting sun on forest trails; the first blades of exploratory growth in the native Seersucker sedges (Carex plantaginea); Marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) shyly poking their heads above the muck in the wetlands.
Thankfully, there are bright spots of human warmth amidst the chill. I recently caught up with mid-western prairie whisperer and great garden friend, Roy Diblik who returned to Toronto in March to speak at two local botanical gardens.
It’s the movement that never stops moving.
Stepping into 2018, the New Perennial movement in naturalistic planting design continues to creep, climb, bloom, and seed its way around the civilized world all the way from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe to Canada, the U.S., South America, China, New Zealand, and beyond.
In every pocket, there’s a growing convergence of design, ecology, and architecture along with a deepening sense of what is possible and why it matters more than ever before (i.e. the lopsided battle to restore quality of life for all species on the home planet.)
In travel and gardens alike, I live for the unexpected. That mysterious bend in the path leading to a whole other something you could never imagine in advance.
Like a portal to another world.
My latest trip to Europe was filled with twists and turns in a month-long journey that skipped through seven different countries.
