Piet Oudolf in "Garden Design"

I enjoyed this month's Garden Design magazine (February 2008). The issue's main feature stories cover European gardens, including Piet Oudolf's famous Hummelo garden.

Oudolf has been a great influence in my own gardening, and we even have a bed that we used to call the Oudolf border.

Now that I've let it go more or less naturalized, I call it the wild garden, and treat it like the meadow. This means we just mow around it and have stopped weeding, edging and controlling the plants - they just fight it out now.

What has always intrigued me about Oudolf is the fact that so many of the plants he favors are North American natives, which, of course, makes them perfect for country gardens in Canada and the US.

What he likes about our plants is their stamina, looks, late-flowering tendencies, fall colors and winter textures. This is exactly the look that I came to adore through his example.

When I began my garden here, it was with plant lists take from Oudolf's books, as well as those of James van Sweden, of Oehme van Sweden fame. They are my garden design heros.



© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Noted: Nice things take effort

Our four-square garden, which takes a lot of effort
Kelvin Browne writes about gardening, architecture in homes section in one of the Toronto papers, the National Post. The following excerpt is from his column today entitled, Nice things take effort:

Regardless of how fancy the house or garden, owners today want them to be low maintenance. Like low taxes, it's assumed to be a right. Just as spoiled children want rewards without work (and, of course, the truly entitled get them), homeowners now require grandeur without lifting a finger.

The most obvious example is summed up by the stupidest phrase in the English language -- "low-maintenance garden." A garden is all about maintenance in varying degrees. It's about nurturing something to become what you envision it should be. There are gardens that require less nurturing than others, but the idea remains. You start somewhere and expect, with dedication or at least periodic attention, to arrive, a few years later, somewhere else. The garden needs you. You're complimented on your stewardship, not your ability to pay for hundreds of perennials. When someone says they like your garden, they like more than your choice of landscape designer; they admire how you worked with him or her to achieve something that matters beyond its ability to increase your home's property value.

The low-maintenance blight has examples indoors, too. Napkins, for instance. You don't expect young people in their first home or with young children to set the dinner table with linen napkins; it's admirable they'd even try to have you over. But after that, paper napkins are lazy. Hosts often let themselves off the hook by saying they're not formal types but you're nonetheless eating in a dining room, having multiple courses and subjected to the husband talking about how good, a.k.a. expensive, the wine is. It says either they're lazy or you're not important enough to bother with. Low maintenance rules.

We've always taken "effort" to heart in garden, but not so much in house. Time to take more care there now that we have renovated. You can read the rest of this excellent column here: Nice things take effort.

Book with sample garden designs

Looking for sample garden designs or garden layouts on the web? Well, you don't find too many. That's because garden designs are time-consuming to prepare and tailored to suit a given property and the gardener's personal preferences. There are, of course, garden designers you can hire to help you, but most homeowners don't have the budget for that.

However, an excellent guide to garden design comes from the Rodale Illustrated Encyclopedia of Perennials, which includes good sample design layouts and lots of tips on combining plants effectively, as well as an easy-to-use basic perennial encyclopedia.

It was my favorite garden design book as I was learning about perennials and garden design. I liked it so much, I wore my copy out! Here's more information about it and another of my favorite garden design books.