This post is part 1 of 2 on our visit to Oudolf Field last summer. Check back soon for part 2.
As we approach the summer solstice this week, my mind has been drifting back to our trip to England last summer. Our last part of the trip was to visit Bath, a quaint city with a fair amount of horticultural sites nearby. One of the highlights of our visit was going to Durslade Farm where the Hauser & Wirth Somerset gallery is, and of course, Oudolf Field.
Durslade Farm looked like an Instagram farmhouse Pinterest board. Karen and I swooned at the blending of wood and iron and stone.
The entrance to Durslade Farm where modern meets rustic.
I loved these log sign and rope holders.
Near the gallery was a farm store where one could purchase a variety of produce and other agrarian staples.
The gift shop featured this lovely dried arrangement hung from the ceiling.
And, dried arrangements featuring perennials like Allium and Achillea were placed on the windowsill.
The men’s bathroom featured another blending of new and old.
For those of you who have seen the documentary Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf by Thomas Piper, Oudolf Field was the garden that was woven through the documentary where they showed it developing from concept through installation to its grand opening within a year.
From my copious notes I took watching the documentary when it was aired online in 2020 thanks to Hauser & Wirth, I learned more about Piet’s design process. He wanted this 1.5 acre planting with its meandering paths to be a space that people could “get lost in.” The story he told through the design was to have a wetland garden with a pond near the gallery that then faded into a block-style perennial planting with the middle being dominated by species erupting from a Sporobolus heterolepis (prairie dropseed) matrix.
In talking about his design process, he stated that he first started with a sketch of the paths, and then once he liked that illustration, he expanded it up to a 1:100 scaled drawing. He would then make a list of 50 to 60 plants that suited the atmosphere of the site, and then he would break them into categories like primary plants or seasonal color.
To ensure a year of color and interest, he would then think about what flowered before June and what looked good in autumn. And, then he would fill the succession gap in between with summer blooming plants. From there he would make the drawing where different colorful shapes would be designated with counts like 3, 5, or 7 to show how many plants would be in each symbol.
He also talked about putting himself on the ground in his mind’s eye and thinking about what people would see when they round a corner or asking himself were things repeating too much across a pathway to make sure that each species was appropriately placed.
A final rendering of Oudolf Field framed on a wall at Durslade Farm
And, now we had the chance to see the rendering made real. As we made our way through the gallery, there was a small cloister garden that Piet designed featuring Molinia caerulea 'Moorhexe' (moor grass) and Sesleria autumnalis (autumn moor grass) matrix out of which the bold leaf Kirengeshoma palmata (yellow wax bells) emerged.
The greenery in the courtyard in the gallery helped soften the architectural lines.
And, then we exited the gallery out the back into Oudolf field. The garden was in its stunning glory for the summer as many perennials were in full bloom. The field is a hortus conclusus, an enclosed garden surrounded by hedges. They make a neutral backdrop for the plants to pop against, and they help to frame the planting like the border of a rug holding all the color of the threads inside.
With my back to the gallery, I look northeast through Oudolf Field.
As Piet talked about in Five Seasons, the first part of the garden was a wetland area. It was much quieter colorwise and featured more greens. This part had a pond where aquatic plants grew. To me, it was a more calm space colorwise as we exited the gallery. I could speculate that in considering the long view perhaps part of the reason this space was more neutral in color was to allow the eye to move past this planting further back instead of stopping it too short with too much vibrancy.
The small pond in Oudolf Field featured aquatic vegetation.
The greens in the front area of the wetland garden were punctuated by the bold foliage of Darmera peltata (umbrella plant) and the light pink of Lythrum salicaria 'Blush' (purple loosestrife).
From here, we advanced into the perennial plantings. An undulating gravel pathway down the middle was sprinkled with turf circles. The perennials were just high enough to hide the various pathways and encourage exploration.
One of my favorite photos from Oudolf Field as it shows just how incredible blocked plantings of perennials can be.
Facing back toward the gallery, one can see ten circular islands of turf in a gravel pathway. Ok, maybe one is hiding…
A more off center shot of the gardens and the circles of turf. Juxtaposing geometric lines with the wildness of the perennial plants is one way that these plantings achieve legibility.
The gray-green Sporobolus heterolepis matrix is visible in this long perennial shot.
In the middle of the garden we found the Sporobolus heterolepis dominated planting where perennials like Echinacea, Monarda, and Amorpha appeared above the seedheads. These matrix plantings appear a bit more natural than the block style plantings.
Echinacea pallida (pale coneflower) emerges from the Sporobolus heterolepis haze.
And, then at the north end of the field was another block style planting that terminated in Smiljan Radic's fibreglass pavilion. At the end of the black is a lookout, and I thought the angle not being oriented toward Oudolf field was a tragedy.
Where the matrix ends and the blocks begin.
Repetition quietly reinforces the intention of design in the subconsious, and Richard Long’s Stone Circle mimicked the round turf areas in Oudolf field.
I remember in Five Seasons, Iwan Wirth, president and co-founder of Hauser & Wirth, said that Piet’s garden was a living masterpiece, and he was right. To see the manifestation of a drawing on a page is always incredible. But, I’m not quite done yet. In Part 2, I’ll write more about the plants of Oudolf Field. Until then, keep growing!
