Overview

Piet Oudolf's gardens excite the senses and stir emotion with an approach to gardening that emphasizes form, texture, light, movement, and color. ""Designing with Plants"" is both inspirational and instructive - an informative and visually breathtaking study that shows readers how to create the same effects in their gardens. This paperback reprint includes four main parts. 'Planting Palettes' shows the range of plant choice available in form, texture, and color. 'Designing Schemes' shows how to combine these elements to create stunning and sculptural gardens. Through stunning photography, 'Planting Moods' shows how to create a particular atmosphere. And 'Year-Round Planting' emphasizes the importance of choosing plants that have value throughout the seasons.

Full Product Details

9780881929539

Table of Contents

Reviews

Designing with Plants may be gorgeous enough to grace a coffee table, but it is also a fresh and exquisitely insightful treatment of the first principles of gardening... As in Gardening with Grasses, which he co-wrote with Michael King, it is obvious that Piet Oudolf is a brilliant and utterly inspiring garden-maker. His gardens have great breadth and scope, yet are full of fine detail ... No one has ever written more tellingly on these topics - or more lucidly. -- Allen Lacy Homeground 19990201 Designing With Plants is a sumptuous look at gardens that depend upon the form, texture and even the movement of plants as much as color. Oudolf is a cutting-edge Dutch designer, Kingsbury an equally bold English designer. -- Robert Smaus Los Angeles Times 19991209 A garden designer and plant breeder, Oudolf designs gardens that use perennials exclusively, eschewing the current trend toward high-maintenance mixed borders of perennials, annuals, and shrubs...His approach is novel and thought-provoking. Library Journal 19991115 In Designing With Plants, he (Piet Oudolf) has teamed up with British designer and writer Noel Kingsbury to produce a handsome book of practical planting ideas and inspiring seasonal images. -- Steve Whysall Vancouver Sun 19991201 His ideas are considered revolutionary by some who are only too aware of the typically stodgy pace of innovation in landscape design. We think the revolution is long overdue! HortIdeas 19991201 One of the nicest things about Designing With Plants is that it teaches all aspects of the sometimes-complicated design process by giving actual examples illustrated amply with many full-color photographs. HortIdeas 19991201 It is wonderfully illustrated with splendid color photographs stunningly printed. -- Allen Lacy Homeground 19990201 Designing With Plants may be gorgeous enough to grace coffee tables, but it also is a fresh and exquisitely insightful treatment of the first principles of gardening. -- Allen Lacy Homeground 19990201 I learned a great deal about garden design from this book, mostly about all the mistakes I have made in my own garden. -- Allen Lacy Homeground 19990201 The sumptuous photographs bring everything into sharp focus. -- Karen Baar Diversion 19991201 Designing with Plants lets the average gardener in on Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf's ideas for creating naturalistic landscapes. -- Kristene Moe Seattle Times 19991128 This important book could be a revelation to serious perennial aficionados who despair of trying to maintain constant color in their gardens. Boston Globe 19991216 It is a lovely, well-photographed book about design and garden philosophy, as well as a guide to the newest perennials and grasses and how to place and grow them. -- Valerie Easton Garden Notes 20000301 In Designing with Plants, Oudolf and co-author Noel Kingsbury share the principles and techniques behind Oudolf's most successful gardens. Country Living Gardener 20000401 Stunning combinations of color and texture Weedpatch Gazette 20000301 A good introduction to the informal style. -- John Van de Water Newark Star-Ledger 20000202 This is a superbly analytical book, giving detailed, step-by-step advice on the planting of borders of flowering perennials and grasses in the new Dutch naturalistic style. -- Stephen Lacey Daily Telegraph (London) 19991231 Throughout the book are wonderfully sensitive and artistic photographs of his [Oudolf's]garden design. -- Joanne S. Carpender National Gardener 20000314 This work by designer, photographer, and horticulturist Oudolf beautifully and lavishly presents the aesthetic quality of plants. Taxon 20000221 For this book takes you leaping forward to a new style and a new way of thinking. It is an exhilarating ride and on its way it overturns a lot of conventional teaching. -- Christopher Bradley-Hole Gardens Illustrated 20000421 For a fresh and strikingly beautiful approach to garden design, try Piet Oudolf's Designing with Plants. -- Lynn Lustberg Garden Showcase 20000301 This book is very user-friendly for anyone interested in all that's green and flowery. If, as a rule, April showers bring May flowers, why not try and orchestrate the blooms? -- Miriam Drennan BookPage 20000423 A perennial border that doesn't require soil amending, lots of deadheading, watering and cutting back sounds too good to be true. In his new book, Designing with Plants, written with Noel Kingsbury, Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf explains how. -- Sally Ruth Bourrie Oregonian 20000323 Perceptive, unconventional, informative, and beautiful. Reading this book is like touring the world's most exclusive private gardens with a master gardener whispering in your ear. -- Corinne Erly Iowa Source 20000412 The beautifully photographed book offers a trove of valuable advice that promises to help gardeners achieve the delightfully moody character of an Oudolf border. Booklist 19991001 This is 'New Wave' garden design. Throughout the book are wonderfully sensitive and artistic photographs of his garden design. National Council of State Garden Clubs Book Reviews 20000304 No-nonsense gardeners who disdain the gloss of coffee-table books might be tempted to pass up Designing with Plants, but that would be a mistake. Oudolf is a major figure in contemporary garden design, and this book shows why. Read it, ponder it, then go tear out that mildewed rose bush, and plant some grasses. -- Thomas Fischer Horticulture 20000505 The book is not only a lesson in unusual designs but really makes you look at these important aspects of the plants ... Fabulous illustrations will inspire you. -- Marty Figley Michigan Observer and Eccentric 20000525 This is what Piet Oudolf does best: an artist with plants, in this book he explains in a simple way how he creates his wonderful effects... Mouthwatering pictures and plant information make this book of interest to gardeners of all levels. -- Isabelle Van Groeningen Garden (Peterborough) 20000612 The layout of this stunning book is as picturesque as the gardens it describes. Nature is presented as art with plants as the medium. American Herb Association Quarterly Newsletter 20001005 Designing With Plants by Pierre Oudoff is a big and beautiful guide. Chock-a-block with glorious examples. -- Marilis Hornidge Rockland Courier-Gazette 20000516 Oudolf's 'Designing with Plants' expertly delivers what is promised: a sophisticated primer for a perennial planting palette. -- Julie Siegel Chicago Botanic Garden 20001210 This has to be one of the best books to convey the design principles that so many other horticultural books overlook today. -- David Daehnke Gardening Guru 20010313 The methods and the plant materials tha have made Oudolf famous as a forward-looking designer are here set out clearly for all to understand - and copy or adapt as appropriate. Traditional Home 20010910 An informative and visually breathtaking study of Piet Oudolf's planting theory and practice, providing all the necessary advice to create the same effects in your own garden. Wisley Bookshop 20020528 A must have! Hoosier Organic Gardener 20021030 An excellent design primer for both beginner and experienced gardener. Ontario Gardener 20020211 Piet Oudolf [has] ... an uncanny eye for plant combinations. -- Anne Raver New York Times 20030302 Indispensible planting and design tips. Gardening Life 20030804 (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 Noel Kingsbury. Horticulture 20030906 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 Gardener 20031016 Piet Oudolf is a serious gardener who has brought the theme of plant formation to its ultimate splendor. -- Richard Prentice Connecticut Horticultural Society Newsletter 20060501

Author Information

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. 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 specific design purposes. His style is the result of the influence of various horticultural traditions such as the combination of Dutch formality and naturalistic planting styles. Oudolf has designed gardens in Holland and Germany, and a public park in Sweden. In the UK , he has created a much-publicized garden in Hampshire and is about to embark on a wildlife park in Norfolk. His own garden and nursery, opened with his wife in 1982 near Arnhem, Holland, has become world-famous. It has appeared in magazines such as Gardens Illustrated, House and Garden, The Independent, Perspectives, and Maire Claire Maison. Oudolf is also the subject of a chapter in Page Dickey's book, Breaking Ground, which profiles ten of the world's foremost contemporary garden designers. He collaborated with garden designer Arne Maynard to create the garden showpiece ""Evolution"", which was awarded the illustrious Best in Show and a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show 2000. Oudolf also partnered in 2000 with Kathryn Gustafson's design team from Seattle, WA to win the design competition for the monumental Millenium Garden, the new focal point for the heart of Chicago. NoA""l Kingsbury is a leading expert in contemporary naturalistic planting design and has always been on the cutting edge of new developments, popularizing a naturalistic and sustainable planting style. NoA""l is a well-known writer on plants and gardens, and he regularly contributes to Hortus, The English Garden, and the Royal Horticultural Society's magazine, The Garden. He lectures regularly in the United States at flower shows and horticultural societies. Noel promotes quality planting in public spaces and is associated with the Landscape Department at the University of Sheffield. A lover of wild spaces and wildflowers in natural environments, NoA""l gardens in a way that expresses this passion. He is especially fond of the way plants group naturally when left to their own devices. He is pleased to be part of the naturalistic planting movement and believes that ""Gardening for myself and for a lot of people is an opportunity to be close to nature.""

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