€˜The skeletons of the plants are for me as important as the flowers.s’ And you need good characters to make it all work So I tried to experiment myself and found it was not that easy… to know what would work, and that to keep a garden interesting you need a certain percentage of plants for each season. I found that garden design was nothing to do with succession or progress – just putting beautiful plants together. €œStructure is the most important component in a successful planting colour is important too but it is a secondary consideration.†“Good repeating plants need to have a distinct personality and a long season of interest, or at least disappear tidily or die back discreetly” €œRepeating plants at regular intervals adds rhythm and variation, It creates a feeling that ‘this is one place, with one design and one vision.'” That use of many of our native plants made Oudolf perhaps our premier interpreter of how an American garden can and should best look, even though we embrace so many styles throughout our coast to coast stretch of environments and climates. That might seem a little odd as this garden designer is Dutch, but when he was commissioned for Chicago’s Lurie Garden he made it his mission to understand the plants of the prairies ( 1). Along with he has made what I think of as ‘New American Style’ to become a popular garden style. One of the better known designers of today, Piet Oudolf has helped revolutionize how we think a garden should look. Photo by Esther Westerveld on Flickr CC 2.0
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