DryStoneGarden

Along with the Piet Oudolf gardens, I saw a lot of other great plantings as I cycled through Holland. Dutch public spaces embrace the exuberance and wildness of plants in a way that is rare to see here in California. These photos are just one example. They’re from a random planting around a playground in Loenen aand de Vecht, a Dutch town that just happened to be on my route. I don’t know anything about this planting except that it’s clearly the product of a designer and culture that loves plants.

The third Oudolf planting I saw was in Rotterdam, near the Erasmus Bridge. Beautiful bridge, with the plantings as a lovely foreground, though I was there a few weeks late to see the garden in its prime. Some of the plants were struggling with the mid-day sun, but afterwards I found out that I was there on the hottest day in the history of the Netherlands, so that’s understandable.

The planting has more of a mediterranean palette than the other two gardens. It has a lot of plants I use such as Nepeta and Teucrium, unlike Vlinderhof which features mostly plants that don’t do well in the Bay Area.

Plants that I use, plus Echinacia; I never plant it, but I would if I could get it to look this. As at Vlinderhof and Singer Laren, it was putting on the biggest show in the garden.

It was my third favorite of the Oudolf gardens I saw, but third favorite Oudolf is still exceptional. A lovely spot.

After Vlinderhof, I visited Piet Oudolf’s new planting for the Singer Laren Sculpture Garden. It’s a great space, wonderfully pleasant, everything you want in a garden. I didn’t particularly care about any of the individual sculptures — sculpture is always a bit hit and miss and, for me, the Laren collection is pretty much all miss — and after seeing the perfection of Vlinderhof’s planting, I found the plantings at Singer Laren a step down. At Vlinderhof virtually every plant was in perfect synch, all pulling together to make the best meadow planting I’ve ever seen; Singer Laren was interesting for the small ways it fell short of Vlinderhof’s perfection. But if I sound critical, that’s not right, I really liked it. It’s a great place, recommended to everyone. A coffee and a pastry in the sun at the Singer Laren garden… wonderful.

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One of the first things I did on this bike trip was check out Piet Oudolf’s garden at Vlinderhof in Utrecht. I’ve been following Oudolf’s work through photographs and videos for years and I’d seen the underwhelming spring version of his High Line plantings, but this was the first proper Piet Oudolf planting I’d seen in person, and it blew me away. Almost every plant was in full bloom, every plant was in synch, every plant helped to make every other plant shine. It’s the best meadow planting I’ve ever seen.

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Another highlight of my Oaxaca trip was a visit to the Oaxaca Ethnobotanical Garden, inside the 16th century complex of the Santo Domingo Cathedral and monastery in the middle of the historic district. It’s a tremendous garden with a unique setting. All of the plants are from Oaxaca and have an ethnobotanic significance for Oaxacans, but it was also laid out with a strong sense of design. All of the paths and many of the plants are laid out with straight lines and ninety degree angles, which is based on traditional Oaxacan design ethos but also made it feel very contemporary. One of the things that most imoressed me about Oaxaca — not just in this garden but running through virtually everything I saw — was how modern the traditional Oaxacan elements feel. My photos are below. (more…)

After checking out the Drew School green wall, I went by Strybing to hang out in the native meadow. It’s one of my favorite spots in the city, and this is pretty much its best time of year. It was designed in 1988 by Ron Lutsko, who recently designed the new planting around the Julia Morgan building at the UC Botanical Garden. It’s one of the nicest meadow plantings I know; you hear a little bit of traffic but you can’t see any sign of the city that’s just beyond the trees.

Give me some bunch grasses, some rocks, and a manzanita and I’ve got pretty much all I need to be happy.

But what puts the meadow over the top is the stone council ring made with some of William Randolph Hearst’s peripatetic monastery stones. I love the simplicity of the circle. The stone ring is for the most part only a single course high, but with enough double-stacked stone to qualify as a wall. The garden has other, more elaborate walls built with these monastery stones, but this is the one I head to on a sunny spring morning.