GH Euro trip: visiting Piet Oudulph’s private garden
Posted:16 August 2014
We were greeted at the approach to the private garden of Piet Oudolph by his wife and gardening partner Anja Piet was travelling when we visited, “as he so often does now,’ says Anja. Not the first time that Bridgette and Deborah have visited this iconic garden (they hosted their first GH trip there a few years ago), but certainly a first for the 20 or so garden and gardening enthusiasts visiting Belgium and The Netherlands with The Garden House.
Anja explained that the development of the gardens and nursery at their old farmhouse at Hummelo in eastern Netherlands, and their joint passion for what soon became the new perennials movement, started 32 years ago inspired by nature, art and the passage of time and the seasons.
Having been a nurseryman for many years, Piet’s artistic ability plus his intimate knowledge of plants made his naturalistic planting schemes so directional and effective. Different species blend together in tightly knit, sophisticated plantings to thrive and compete as they do in natural habitats.
It was such a joy to walk around in the sunshine, having the garden to ourselves, just absorbing and wondering at the unexpected plant combinations, varieties and structures.
A new modern building in the garden now houses Piet’s studio and Anja’s private office – again a fascinating juxtaposition to the plantings and to their more traditional brick farmhouse and black-painted outbuildings.
The planting in the various areas of the garden ranges from an open meadow-like area of mixed perennials, annuals and grasses planted in a seemingly artless style, intermixed and fluid – the ‘trial garden’ to the more formal, but still flowing front garden, hidden from the road by high clipped hedges of beech and yew, and more organic clipped hedges of beech, oak, Amelanchier, Cornus mas and Acer campestre. The much-photographed ‘wave’ hedges sadly are gone, victims of a severe flood some years ago. In this garden you are lead in one direction, only to find yourself drawn in another, the art of surprise and anticipation is very strong; shrubs (especially hydgrangeas, much loved in Belgium) mix with perennials and grasses to create a shimmering blur above and within.
Now an internationally sought after planting and garden designer, Piet has many important private and public commissions under his belt – including New York’s Battery Park and the extraordinary High Line, Lurie Garden at Chicago’s Millennium Park, and in the UK, gardens at Scampston Hall, Pensthorpe, and areas of RHS Wisley – even a one-off enclosed garden at London’s Serpentine Gallery in the summer of 2011.
