The Oudolf Garden was designed to be a four-season garden with interest throughout the year. But what does this actually look like?
When you think of a perennial garden, what do you see in your mind’s eye? If you’re like me, it’s easy to picture spring with its many flowering bulbs and fresh green leaves poking through the soil. Here in the garden we’ll have familiar favorites like daffodils and tulips as well as more unusual things such as quamash, fox-tail lilies, and trilliums. (We’re actually going to be planting nearly 22,000 of these spring bloomers in November, come give us a hand! Keep an eye out for a call for volunteers.)
Summer is probably the easiest for most of us to imagine with its lush growth and joyful flowers everywhere. Butterflies flit between the blazing stars, and a gentle breeze stirs the grasses in the meadow. Winter interest will be new for many visitors, so I’m excited for people to see the seedheads and the architecture of the dormant plants. There’s nothing more magical on a winter morning than to see birds flitting from stem to stem pulling seeds from coneflowers sparkling with frost.
But with the season’s first nor’easter behind us, and the opening coming in a few short weeks, our focus now is squarely on fall. And while we might not know yet exactly what will happen when, what we can say for sure is that autumn in the garden is a season of fall foliage and fading flowers.
It’s likely that some species such as the graceful toad lily (Trycirtus formosana ‘Hatagisa’), the deep purple monkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’) and the bee-favorite calamint (Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta) will still be blooming straight through to frost. If you ask any of the volunteers who have spent time in the garden this summer they’ll tell you that the calamint has been crawling with bees since it began blooming in June. Asters too are a good bet this time of year (like Aster macrophyllus ‘Twilight’). The main show however will likely be foliage.
From the bright yellows of willowleaf bluestar (Amsonia tabernaemontana var. salicifolia) to the reds of sea lavender (Limonium latifolium) and geranium (such as Geranium wlassovianum), all the fall colors you expect on your trees will be present in the garden. Some will be soft and gauzy, others bold and solid. And as designer Piet Oudolf likes to say, “Brown is a color too!” and so the garden will also showcase myriad browns, tans and beiges. The prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) grass in the meadow, for instance, will fade to a sea of soft blonde with other colors and textures popping through. So if you come visit the garden this season after it opens in mid-October, you’ll get to see it donning its autumn best. I hope to see you here!
From Landscape Curator, Peter Slothower.