Dream Plants for the Natural Garden

by Piet Oudolf, Henk Gerritsen

Overview

Join two of the world’s most influential garden designers, Piet Oudolf and Henk Gerritsen, as they describe their ideal perennials, bulbs, grasses, ferns and small shrubs for your natural garden. This comprehensive compendium classifies these 1200 plants according to their behaviour, strengths and uses.

An ideal plant is one that is both beautiful and robust, performing reliably with very little input from the gardener – and without artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Rather than striving for big, bold masses of colourful blooms that are vigorously pruned back as soon as they have finished flowering, their innovative approach to gardening involves choosing plants chiefly for their form – leaves, flower heads and stems included – which means they retain their natural beauty through all the seasons. Find within:
 

• 1200 beautiful and reliable plants used by top garden designers
• Full descriptions and growing instructions
• Unique easy-to-follow classification according to growing behaviour and use in the garden
• Natural gardening, without artificial fertilizers or pesticides
• More than 250 full-colour photographs

With these plants and expert advice, create a garden that will thrive with the life of the insects and birds it welcomes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780711234628
Publisher:	Frances Lincoln
Publication date:	12/01/2013
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 10.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Piet Oudolf, founder of the New Wave planting movement, is an internationally acclaimed landscape designer who has radically redefined what a garden can be by combining ecology, emotion and design. As a plantsman, his aim is to emphasize the form, texture and natural harmony of plants, and as a skilled plant breeder, he creates new varieties for these and other design purposes. His innovative planting aesthetics can be seen across the globe in the many iconic urban spaces he has designed, including New York’s High Line, Chicago’s Lurie Garden and London’s Serpentine Gallery. His own garden and nursery near Arnhem, Holland, has become world-famous.

Piet is the subject of the 2019 feature documentary Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf and has been profiled by The New York Times, PBS News Hour and The Daily Telegraph. He is the co-author of numerous books, including Planting: A New Perspective, Landscapes in Landscapes and Planting Design: Gardens in Time and Space. In 2019, Piet was granted the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Garden Designers at the SGD Awards Ceremony.

Distinguished garden designer Henk Gerritsen (1948–2008) was born in Utrecht in the Netherlands. He trained as an artist and made his living as a painter before turning to garden design. He was the author of several books, and his best-known garden design project in the UK was the reconstruction of the Waltham Place gardens in Berkshire. He also started the Priona Gardens in Schuinesloot in the Netherlands with his friend Anton Schlepers.

Read an Excerpt

Winter is perhaps the best time of year for the gardener: the peace! You don't have to do anything, you don't have to think about anything and you don't have to worry about anything. You can just sit next to the fire reading gardening books and dreaming about how wonderful the garden will be next summer. Naturally, you will have to ensure that the garden has been prepared for winter: that is to say readied for winter without having cut back one plant or raked one leaf. Silhouettes of Eupatorium, Aster umbellatus, Veronicastrum virginicum and the beautiful black spherical seed heads left by the monardas which even in the depths of winter smell like Earl Grey tea. Grasses, of course, especially Miscanthus with its amazing silver plumes, and a lot of Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' against the backdrop of a neatly clipped hedge or just against the chill winter wind: it is always sad when you have to cut it back again in spring. And in front, close to the house so you can see them from your armchair, the strong, fleshy shoots of hellebores, working their way through the fallen leaves and remains of last summer's border intones of apple green, darkest purple, white and pale pink, exactly as you would see them in nature, in the Balkans. And, naturally, a specimen of Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn' next to the door so you can experience the delicious scent of its flowers every time you go in and out. A garden lovely enough to lift the spirits even on the most sombre and overcast days of winter. And when it has frozen and frost lies everywhere, or when it has snowed, it is so beautiful that you can sit, next to your cat, and stare outside for hours with your nose pressed against the window pane admiring the ghostly forms.

Editorial Reviews

'A Bible for those interested in turning their garden into a naturalistic haven.'

'A Bible for those interested in turning their garden into a naturalistic haven.'

From the Publisher

The impassioned writers, famous for their stunning landscape designs in The Netherlands and beyond, argue for the use of low-maintenance, architecturally strong plants in creating and sustaining natural- looking and easily tended gardens. Some 1,200 such naturalistic plants are described, many accompanied by evocative color photographs. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"An excellent source for gardeners who want to start a natural–looking garden, as well as a valuable reference on many of the low–maintenance plants now available."—Lori D. Kranz, Bloomsbury Review, May 2001

Bloomsbury Review - Lori D. Kranz

"When many people were discovering the English cottage garden, Dutch garden designer/author Piet Oudolf was hybridizing wildflowers and North American prairie plants to make them behave just enough for the garden bed-but still look as if they came out of the wild."—Sally Ruth Bourrie, Oregonian, August 23, 2001

Oregonian - Sally Ruth Bourrie

"I loved this book. It's smart, incredibly informative, well and engagingly written, and the photos are excellent."—Vincent Lawrence, Fine Gardening, January/February 2002

Fine Gardening - Vincent Lawrence

"An excellent source for gardeners who want to start a natural–looking garden, as well as a valuable reference on many of the low–maintenance plants now available."
— Lori D. Kranz

Bloomsbury Review

"When many people were discovering the English cottage garden, Dutch garden designer/author Piet Oudolf was hybridizing wildflowers and North American prairie plants to make them behave just enough for the garden bed-but still look as if they came out of the wild."
— Sally Ruth Bourrie

Oregonian

"I loved this book. It's smart, incredibly informative, well and engagingly written, and the photos are excellent."
— Vincent Lawrence

Fine Gardening