Planting: A New Perspective

by Piet Oudolf, Noel Kingsbury

Piet Oudolf’s gardens—unique combinations of long-lived perennials and woody plants that are rich in texture and sophisticated in color—are breathtaking and have deep emotional resonance. With Planting, designers and home gardeners can recreate these plant-rich, beautiful gardens that support biodiversity and nourish the human spirit.

An intimate knowledge of plants is essential to the success of modern landscape design, and Planting shares Oudolf’s considerable understanding of plant ecology, explaining how plants behave in different situations, what goes on underground, and which species make good neighbors. Extensive plant charts and planting plans will help you choose plants for their structure, color, and texture. A detailed directory shares details like each plant’s life expectancy, the persistence of its seedheads, and its propensity to self-seed.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Nature, Plants, Horticulture, Landscape Architecture, Landscaping

280 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2013

About the author

World-famous landscape designer Piet Oudolf is principal of a small landscape design firm in Hummelo in the eastern part of The Netherlands. He has designed award-winning public and private gardens in Holland, Germany, Sweden, Britain, Ireland, Canada, and the U.S. "

Reviews

[jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

In general, fancy landscape design is not really my bag. And contemporary anything is not really my bag either. In general, I am more focused on permaculture principals and functional design of landscapes that produce food. So this contemporary fancy landscape design book is not really my preference, but this book is exceptional and a lot of the theories can be applied to more functional/productive landscapes. Piet Oudolf's landscapes are like, beautiful, concentrated, curated versions of the best natural landscapes. water-wise, lovely in all four seasons, providing habitat, etc. I got so much peace and inspiration from the photographs. I'm sure hanging out in Oudolf-designed spaces is really awesome.

This is really information-dense. It is not a coffee table book. It's more like a horticulture textbook.

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find this New Wave Planting style so appealing. I love how he puts it—-landscape design that is less like an architect and more like a conductor. Really leaning into what’s beautiful about the mess and spontaneity in nature while being incredible thoughtful about the structure, texture, shape, color of each plant relationship in the whole. Lush and wild and surprising.

[Ariane · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 again, the principles are great---especially the concept of different matrices in planning and achieving a more natural look. But 95% of species and no extra water available is unsustainable in US west.

[Lauren Krueger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most comprehensive, lovely, down to earth landscape planting book I have encountered so far. Ten stars.

[William Cabell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting perspective on the development of large-scale garden design. I’ll be stealing ideas from this for my own house. I just wish there were more concrete and thoroughly explained examples.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I just don’t like Oudolf’s style all that much. It is very busy and meadow-like, while I prefer a mixture of foliage textures with fewer flowers, which feels more calming to me. Oddly, he mentions that larger leaves are important to prevent overwhelming busyness, but I see very little use of them in the accompanying photos.
“Bold leaves stand out and act as punctuation, resting places for the eye, helping to develop rhythm. A planting without any bold leaves can dissolve into a morass of detail, and will lack any kind of structure.” (p. 47)

He also makes some random unsupported statements like “Most of us believe that pink and yellow do not work.” (p. 49) Do we? I certainly think pink and yellow are a classic combination. Is there some strange Dutch history behind this?

The photos in the last part of the book, the seasons, are my favorite, though I think it would have been more instructive to have photos of the same parts of the garden so we could see the seasonal development.

[Michael Leuchtenburg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having just read Planting in a Post-Wild World, by West and Rainer, this was going over a lot of the same ground for me. That's fine - it was covered in a different way. But upon reviewing the two books after completing them, I found that this book presented the information in a less clear way. It also felt very self-aggrandizing. The book is constantly going "Piet invented X", etc. It may be true, but some of the book felt like an ad for his landscaping services.

Fabulous photos, and some great ideas for ornamental landscapes which have useful functions and require minimal inputs and maintenance.

[Annie Oosterwyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best gardening books I've read in a long time. This is the style of garden I prefer and it was great to not only see the fabulous photos of plantings, but to read about the theory behind it. I definitely plan to skate on the High Line this summer and visit as many other of these gardens as I can.
Now to check the seed catalogs to find out where I can get some of these grasses.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful photography and lots of unique suggestions for gardens. A "coffee table" book!

[Is · Rating 5 out of 5]

From scribbles to full planting plans: this book gives a sneak peek into the horticultural brain of Piet Oudolf. Information dense and overall very useful for understanding what this type of gardening is all about and how these landscape gardens keep being interesting throughout the seasons. Although the size is not really applicable to my tiny city garden, it’s an inspiration for planning some yearlong interest . (And in this part of the world -nw Europe- pretty sustainable as well)

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very informative textbook-like treatise on Piet Oudolf's garden design methods and theory. It is a bit dry and repetitive to read straight through, but it does give incredibly helpful information for how to design a nature-lite garden featuring perennials and year long visual interest. The tables of plant information are highly useful.

[Kiera · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is super beautiful and has great plant selection information, but I found it to be challenging to read. The ideas Oudolf & Kingsbury set out to explain are incredibly abstract and described in a roundabout manner. Much like the excerpts from planting plans, it felt like I was trying to understand a whole idea by staring at tiny pieces. Interesting, but dense.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely helpful book as we plan out our zone 7a block/matrix native front yard garden. The ideas presented by the New Perennial show the beauty that can be had by balancing thoughtful landscape design and embracing the spontaneity of nature all while supporting the local ecosystem. Very excited for spring planting to begin!

[Megan Bullington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiring! Can't wait to order some new plants and get out in my garden.

[Lisa Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

The European and commercial planting focus made it not very useful for my needs. I did like the plant table in the back a lot though. Not sure if they are readily available here.

[Adina Stene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book and Piet Oudolf's work! I recommend it! Lovely images and very good writting.

[Elena Carli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bellezza e purezza per gli occhi 🌼🌻

[c · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oudolf is an artist whose medium is plants & landscape design. I do not see this as a how-to book for gardeners (I’m allergic to grasses for one thing!) but as a way of understanding Oudolf’s philosophy, thoughts on the role of gardens, and design process. Super interesting and generous regardless of how you feel about the gardens themselves.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Planting design is a widely overlooked corner of gardening design, itself a sub-discipline of landscape design. Yet here are both core tools for ecological engineering, aimed at improving water, air, and biodiversity, as well as an aesthetics and composition as compelling as those found in any visual art. In the spaces between the massive deployment of commercial farming and wilderness restoration, between maintained special gardens of institutions and the rich and common flowerbeds and vegetable patches, Piet Oudolf & Noel Kingsbury have carved out something new: an organized approach to planting that is regionally appropriate yet eschews token locality, that reads natural but evaded the weeding of the undertrained landscaper, that performs natural duties but yet maintains human appeal, that lasts for years to decades but maintains something for every season, and supports sustaining ecologies while requiring that people will want to keep it for its own sake.

In this volume, you will find both theory and practice, compositional and biological advice, visions for the future and long-completed projects still going strong. This book will teach you how to see both wild spaces and gardens in a different way, looking at how repeating combinations occur. It will give you the tools to combine plants for yourself but also reveals existing plant combination systems.

I will admit that gardening books generally didn't appeal to me previously to this volume. I've always liked flowers and liked to look at pictures of gardens, but I didn't want an ecological screed, or a boring bunch of lists, or an impossible set of instructions, or a commercial for particular nurseries or gardeners or whatever, or just another commission made by somebody with too much money. What you get with this book is a design book, a real design book, that advances serious, humane, nuanced, Most Advanced Yet Appropriate advice that appeals to people who want to make improvements in the real world for real people. What is design? It's about taking the best objective knowledge about the way things are and the best subjective knowledge about what makes people flourish and applying them in the most appropriate way to get the most likely sustained uptake. This is what I mean when I say this is a design book.

Also, this book is beautiful. You can use this to keep making your life better by improving your surroundings, or you don't have to do a damn thing and just appreciate it for people doing great work, both scientifically and aesthetically. Either way, your life will be better for it, for this is a book about doing both.

[Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book concentrates on "plant design for the twenty- first century". It is loaded with all kinds of information on planting, grouping plants, combining plants, long-term plant performance, and "the new planting" which refers to "negotiating with nature" versus absolute control which plant design appeared to be in the past. One aspect that I found very interesting is just which plants are truly a perennial. I believe the authors mentioned about five or six families of plants that are really perennial. The rest fall into categories such as short-lived, ability to spread, and ability to seed. This book is more involved in meadow planting that back yard gardens, but many of the principles can be applied to the every day garden. I do not believe this is a book for the beginner gardener, but with knowledge of gardening, this book will aid the perennial gardener.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I became aware of Piet Oudolf as a result of his work on the High Line in NYC, which I have seen photos of but never seen in person. From those photos, it was immediately apparent that here was a landscape designer who really embraces the beauty of nature rather than creating formal stiff plantings. Despite his European origins, his gardening style and many of the plantings in this book adapt well to the US. His style mirrors our prairies of which there are now few examples. Gardeners would greatly benefit from seeing alternative possibilities to the popular style of mulching everything. I hope Piet Oudolf receives other highly visible commissions in the US and that he becomes a household name among gardeners. I would love to see his style rise in popularity. Adapting it to smaller plots does present some issues which perhaps Oudolf will address in a future book.

[romney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book if you're looking to get the Piet Oudolf look. Plenty of colour photos, planting plans and insight into the philosophy behind the designs. Its mostly on the large scale, but you can still apply it to your own garden. For instance, I learnt how to work out the potential longevity and spread of a plant by looking at the type of stem and root system. I assumed Echinacea were meant to clump up, but actually they die after a few years and spread by seed, so now I can treat them correctly. Good coffee table book and you might learn something!

[Mhd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several of the concepts in this book are unusual. Some don't apply to my garden directly, but it was still very interesting. Lovely photos: most of the gardens here are of the natural or wild look. Most of the gardens/plants are in Europe or New York. Few of the plants are specifically appropriate to Southern California or other near desert areas, but the overall design concepts are still valuable. I wish ALL garden books had the same attention to both the "longevity" and "persistence" of individual plants.

[Lily C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a comprehensive guide to matrix plantings as practiced by Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingbury. I liked the chapter on combining plants which detailed plant structure above ground, would of liked a continuation to root structures as these also play apart in making good combinations. The photographs are sheer eye-candy. This is a book I would use in combination with a guide to local native plants in my case probably Lorraine Johnson's "100 Easy-to-grow Native Plants for Canadian Gardens". It is is on my reference shelf.

[Xander Schofield · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very scientific but approachable book which I would suggest for any professional of the horticultural industry looking to broaden their perspective on planting design.
It has pushed me towards a better comprehension of ecological processes without bogging me down with very high level scientific labelling.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much new here except more technical and geared toward public plantings (like the High Line).

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...plantings will change over time and...the role of the gardener or manager is to direct these processes in a way which preserves or enhances their visual qualities and other desires features, such as species diversity."

[Patti · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love photos of Flora you'll love paging through this book. Gorgeous pix of prairie and meadow gardens will dazzle you. The book is about the authors detailed planning these beautiful gardens for public places around the world.

[Trish Remley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good synopsis of recent landscape design concerning sustainability and the support of biodiversity. Thoroughly enjoyed each chapter and very interesting to see my own design ideas very much inline with many of these presented.