Piet Oudolf's personal account of his celebrated career in the context
of the evolution of his own garden.
An intimate look at the personal garden of the Dutch landscape designer
renowned for his plantings at the High Line in New York City, and Lurie
Garden at Chicago's Millennium Park.
Hummelo - near the village of the same name in Gelderland in the eastern
Netherlands - is visited by thousands of gardeners seeking inspiration
each year. It is Piet Oudolf's home, his personal garden laboratory, a
former nursery run by his wife Anja, and the place where he first tested
new designs and created the new varieties of perennials that are now
widely available.
A follow-up to Oudolf's successful Landscapes in Landscapes - Hummelo
tells the story of how the garden has evolved over the past three
decades since Oudolf, Anja, and their two young sons moved onto the
property, with its loamy sand and derelict, wood stove-heated farmhouse,
in 1982.
Text by noted garden author and longtime personal friend Noel Kingsbury
places Hummelo in context within gardening history, from The
Netherlands' counterculture and nascent green movement of the 1960s, to
prairie restoration in the American Midwest, and shows how its
development has mirrored that of Oudolf's own outstanding career and
unique naturalistic aesthetic.
Oudolf has long been at the forefront of the Dutch Wave and New
Perennial Style movements in garden design, which have ecological
considerations at their base. His work stresses a deep knowledge of
plants, eschewing short-lived annuals in favor of perennials that can be
appreciated for both structure and blooms in every season. He is
credited for leading the way to today's focus on sustainability in
garden design.
The book will appeal to readers who favor beautiful, biodiverse, and
ever-changing plantings: seed heads, grasses, sedges, and winter
silhouettes. They will be drawn into its pages by lush photography,
often demonstrating how Oudolf views his own work, and providing rare
glimpses into his daily life.
Short essays highlight important techniques, including scatter plants
and matrix planting, and introduce other famed landscape designers -
Karl Foerster, Henk Gerritsen, Rob Leopold, Ernst Pagels, and Mien
Ruys - to create a full panorama of the movement Oudolf now leads.
