Planting the Natural Garden Planting the Natural Garden Hardcover Kindle

Piet Oudolf is among the world’s most innovative garden designers and a leading exponent of naturalistic planting, a style that takes inspiration from nature but employs artistic skill in creating planting schemes.

Oudolf's extensive work over 30 years of practice includes public and private gardens all over the world. He is best known for his work on the High Line and Battery Park in New York, the Lurie Garden in Chicago's Millennium Park, and Potters Fields in London.

Echinops bannaticus

Echinops, Asteraceae, globe thistle

Stately plants with deeply cut, more or less prickly leaves and large spherical flower heads at the top of a single, or a lightly branched, stem. Bees, bumblebees and butterflies avidly visit the flowers. The plants thrive easily on dry or wet, poor or rich soil.

E. bannaticus

Height: 160cm

Flowering: July – August

A sturdy plant with purple-blue flower heads that can reach up to 8 cm.

Monarda bradburiana

Monarda, Lamiaceae, wild bergamot, bee balm

Without doubt one of the most important of garden plant genera. Everything about the plants is attractive. The stems are sturdy and do not collapse. The leaves smell delightful, and the flowers are plentiful and last for a long time. As a finishing touch, swarms of butterflies descend on the plant when in flower.

M. bradburiana

Height: 60 cm

Flowering: May – June

Pale pink flowers on a relatively compact plant. This species is more tightly clump forming than the traditional varieties and flowers earlier.

Most people long for tranquility in their lives, or in their own garden at any rate. Besides the familiar blue/lilac/pink combination, many other extremely tranquil color combinations are possibly more original. Pale yellow has a subtle and tranquil effect and can be used with lilac or pink. Yellow with blue is a welltried and very beautiful combination, but it does not exactly exude tranquility.

Very attractive and perhaps not so obvious are combinations with green. Green with blue, for instance, is a very cool but also very charming combination. Unusual (and tranquil) is the combination of green, pink, and widow’s purple. Finally, there is the totally green garden, in which the nuances are sought in the shape and color of the foliage.

Tranquil combinations

Achillea ‘Credo’

Foeniculum vulgare ‘Giant Bronze’

Gaura lindheimeri ‘Whirling Butterflies’

Lunaria rediviva

Nepeta govaniana

Perovskia abrotanoides ‘Little Spire’

Salvia nemerosa ‘Crystal Blue’

Teucrium hircanicum

Thalictrum delavayi