Piet Oudolf is the world’s meadow-garden master: tour his most soul-soothing outdoor spaces

Piet Oudolf is a rarity in the ever-evolving world of landscape design, in which few leading lights come close to household recognition. Garden designer Oudolf is not only venerated but has become shorthand for an entire landscape aesthetic: of bold perennial plantings and dynamic textures, and great drifts of gently shifting colour.

Who is Piet Oudolf?

Internationally celebrated for commissions in public parks, botanical gardens and cultural institutions alike, Piet Oudolf (b. 1944) is a Dutch designer whose work is both instant and instantly recognisable, combining cultivated elegance with the transportive drama of the wild meadow – as seen at New York’s High Line, Chicago’s Lurie Garden and RHS Wisley, to name just a few.

Piet Oudolf: the beginnings

As with all revered masters whose body of work bears a measure of idiosyncrasy, it is easy to forget the pioneering vision and enterprising experimentation that preceded the acclaim. Back in the 1980s, spurred by a lack of diversity in commercially available plant material, Oudolf began trialling different species at his home in Hummelo, Netherlands, taking inspiration from natural landscapes and plant communities - most notably the vast, perennial-rich grasslands of North America.

Developing a specialist plant nursery at the garden with horticulturist Romke van de Kaa – which, up until its closure to the public in 2010, was a place of pilgrimage for many gardeners – Oudolf developed an approach to planting design which championed ornamental grasses, integrating them with bold brushstrokes of perennial species including the likes of vibrant echinacea, amsonia and persicaria.

Alongside a handful of other pioneering Dutch gardeners such as Henk Gerritsen and Ton ter Linden, he became a leading figure in what would later be dubbed the ‘New Perennial movement’, one of the most influential styles in the history of garden design, and one that has continued to evolve ever since.

Signature style: the New Perennial movement

At its heart, the New Perennial movement is a naturalistic planting style underpinned by an appreciation and deep understanding of the full lifecycle of a herbaceous perennial plant (which regrows from the ground every year), from emerging green shoot through spring and summer colour to faded bloom and brittle winter seed-head.

Rather than designing gardens to be enjoyed only at peak times of the year, Oudolf and his peers embraced the dynamism that comes with seasonal change, conceiving planting schemes that, much like wild, natural perennial meadows, morph across the year. Most strikingly, the movement embraced the beauty of senescence – plants in natural decay, which Oudolf considers a ‘fifth’ season. Indeed, the plantsman once remarked that flora is only worth growing if it looks good when it is dead.

Month by month, the character of an Oudolf garden transitions as different species flare and fade: contrasting textures and structural forms carry the eye across the planted canvas, while literal movement is drawn from the air in the flutter of grasses in the breeze. By the early 2000s, this impactful approach had been adopted by many influential European and North American garden designers, and the employment of grasses as a unifying ‘matrix’ for a planting scheme – notably varieties of North American switchgrass, bluestem and deschampsia – was increasingly popularised.

A landmark moment: the High Line, New York

One of Piet Oudolf’s most distinctive attributes as a practitioner is his straddling of the horticultural and art worlds. From his rhythmic, ‘painterly’ planting schemes to the much-revered hand-coloured plans that accompany his work, Oudolf’s approach to landscape design has the rare quality of being regarded as an art form.

This has no doubt contributed to his frequent patronage by galleries, museums and cultural institutions, from London’s Serpentine and Somerset’s Hauser & Wirth galleries to the Spanish sculpture garden Chillida Leku (indeed, his drawn designs often feature in gallery catalogues and are sold as framed prints). The landscape Oudolf is most prominently associated with, however, is undoubtedly New York’s High Line, a 1.4-mile-long, raised public walkway crammed with engaging, dynamic plantings.

Formerly a disused railway leading from the Meatpacking District through the west Manhattan neighbourhoods of Chelsea and Hudson Yards, the High Line was transformed into a vibrant urban park by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with James Corner Field Operations and Piet Oudolf.

Oudolf was commissioned by the Friends of the High Line and the City of New York to make a garden of multiple zones and atmospheres. Taking inspiration from the wild plants that had naturally colonised the deserted tracks – many of them North American natives – Oudolf’s design ranges from a dappled birch grove to areas of wetland, sunny meadow and grassland-inspired matrix plantings. First opened in 2009, and now one of the city’s most popular attractions, the park is considered a major achievement in urban greening, and a rare example of high-design horticulture in the public realm.

Career development

As in all creative disciplines, Oudolf’s practice has developed and refined over the years, with the bold block-plantings of his early career structurally loosening and often softened through the use of lighter, more airy grasses and perennials. Continued observation of wild landscapes has driven his aesthetic evermore in the direction of the ‘naturalistic’ perennial meadow, which is perhaps best exemplified in his revised work at RHS Wisley in Surrey.

Here, Oudolf’s original design for Wisley’s glasshouse borders – implemented at the turn of the millennium – took the form of a wide lawn path dividing two large sections of perennial planting. Remodelled and reopened last year, the borders now envelop the visitor fully, as they follow snaking, looping pathways that facilitate a more immersive experience amongst the plants. The new design features almost three times as many plant varieties as the original garden, selected as much for sustainable climate resilience as their multi-seasonal beauty.

11 key works

Hummelo, Netherlands (1982-present)

Though the garden at Oudolf’s home and studio in Hummelo, Netherlands, no longer houses his once revered plant nursery, it remains the designer’s showpiece landscape, and experimental ground for new ideas and planting compositions.

The Battery Bosque, New York (2002)

Oudolf’s masterplan for the gardens of Manhattan Island’s popular, 25-acre Battery waterfront park – which offers views of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island – features areas of contrasting plantings, from shady woodland, sunny bikeway and broad perennial garden schemes.

The Lurie Garden, Chicago (2004)

Featuring many native North American prairie plant species, downtown Chicago’s three-acre Lurie Garden – Oudolf’s first commissioned garden in the USA, designed in partnership with landscape architecture firm GGN – reconnects the city with the surrounding Midwestern grasslands: a place of urban greening shared by people, pollinators and rare plants.

Hauser & Wirth, Somerset (2014)

At the Somerset Gallery outside Bruton, Oudolf converted a former agricultural field into a living artwork. An intoxicating mix of richly coloured perennials and grasses, the ‘Oudolf Field’ draws visitors along curving lawn pathways towards the Radić Pavilion, designed by Chilean architect Smiljan Radić (and originally commissioned as the 2014 Serpentine Pavilion).

RHS Wisley, Surrey (2021-2024)

Having first designed the glasshouse borders at RHS Wisley in 2001, Oudolf’s new 2024 design immerses visitors within naturalistic perennial plantings via a snaking, rather than linear, footpath.

Oudolf Garden Detroit, Michigan (2021)

Situated on Detroit’s Belle Isle state park, opposite downtown, this three-acre public garden is entirely volunteer-run, channelling the city’s urban-greening, grassroots vitality.

Serpentine Pavilion planting, London (2011)

In providing an isolated strip of planting at the heart of Peter Zumthor’s Serpentine Pavilion of 2011, Oudolf put plants centre-stage. The rare, contemplative setting of Zumthor’s structure, and its inward-facing periphery seating, allowed visitors to pause and experience the magic of Oudolf’s seasonally-shifting palette of perennials, which included carmine-coloured eupatorium, dark-leafed actaea and scarlet monarda.

Chillida Leku, San Sabastian (2019)

Welcoming visitors to Chillida Leku – a museum and sculpture garden outside San Sebastian dedicated to the work of Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida – is Oudolf’s perennial border: a gently mounded exhibition of brilliant herbaceous colour. Here, the resulting seed heads of pink echinacea and bold blue globe-thistle are left standing, providing winter structure.

Maggie’s, Royal Marsden Hospital, London (2019)

At Maggie’s Royal Marsden, Oudolf’s interconnected zonal plantings are designed to make productive use of a tricky site with varying light levels, and offer a soothing setting for visiting patients. The garden’s 12,000 plants fill out across areas of shade, dappled light and full sun, with ornamental grasses knitting the space together.

Vitra Campus Garden, Germany (2021)

In 2021, renowned Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf created a lush 4,000 sq m perennial garden for Vitra, bringing a touch of nature to the company's headquarters in the southern German town of Weil am Rhein. Its opening could not have been more perfectly timed: having endured long stretches of domestic confinement in the preceding year because of the Covid pandemic, visitors craved gardens, fresh air, and horizons afforded by wide open spaces.

Vandalorum, Sweden (2025)

Among Oudolf’s most recent projects is the garden masterplan for the Vandalorum Museum of Art and Design in Värnamo, Sweden. Completed in 2025 and designed to be truly immersive, the eight-hectare site features a perennial meadow courtyard set out in ‘bowl’ shape with meandering walkways, providing space for reflection, respite and outdoor education activities.

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