Designing with Plants

a book by Piet Oudolf

With Noël Kingsbury

Trained as an architect, Oudolf values plants as much for their form and texture as for their color. He is the founder of New Wave planting, a spectacular naturalistic style of landscape design. Oudolf stresses the importance of choosing plants that “live well and die well,” so that from birth in the spring through the crescendo of summer to the stark beauty of autumn and winter the garden presents continuing drama and interest.

Winner of the New York Times Editor’s Choice Award- Best Books for Gardening

Media reviews of this book:

“Stretches your imagination to see plants not just for their flowers but also for their shape, form, color, size, and texture in all seasons.”

—Maggie Oster, National Gardening, October 2003

[Piet Outdolf’s] views about which perennials look best in fall and winter, along with inspiring photographs of late-season gardens he has created, can be found in Designing with Plants, written with Noël Kingsbury.

—Horticulture, September 2003

“Indispensible planting and design tips.”

—Gardening Life

“Piet Oudolf [has] ... an uncanny eye for plant combinations.”

—Anne Raver, The New York Times, March 2, 2003

“An excellent design primer for both beginner and experienced gardener.”

—The Ontario Gardener, Vol. 3, No. 4 Winter 2002

Publishing details:

Hardcover, 160 pages, 9.4" x 11", 276 color photos

©1999, Timber Press, ISBN 0-88192-437-7

An excerpt from this book:

Mysticism in the garden depends almost entirely on circumstances which are beyond your control, when the power of the elements combines with nature — in the early morning, in fog, or at dusk, for instance — to make you feel quite alone. You cannot plant to create mysticism, but certain plants will work best in mystical circumstances; they almost become people in your imagination, taking on human characteristics and attributes. You can imagine that they are looking at you or coming towards you.

Mysticism may be a strange word to use with regard to a garden. It is best defined as a spiritual experience where one feels at one with the whole of creation, and hence at one with the divinity itself. The thirteenth-century German Dominican Meister Eckhart is one of the best-known Christian exponents of the same philosophy, while Sufis of Islam are also familiar to many. By turning the conventional view of gardening upside down, however, it is possible to create a vision of the garden which sees nature as supreme. The concept of the sublime has illustrated that it is possible to feel in awe of the garden, and it is only one step beyond this to see the garden as a paradigm of creation, and the human role within it as a minor one. Rather than controloing and taming nature, the gardener merely orchestrates living things that have their own rythms and processes, over which he/she has litle control. The mystic wants to feel as though he is an integral part of nature, the expression of divine beauty, so the mystic’s garden is somewhere very personal where it is possible to feel at one with nature — gardening as a spiritual exercise!

About Piet Oudolf

Piet Oudolf is a native of Holland and originally studied to be an architect. Instead of designing buildings he became the founder of New Wave planting, a movement which takes inspiration from nature but employs artistic skill in creating planting schemes ...

Ordering information:

Designing with Plants (Hardcover) (B-029)
Each $34.95
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