Piet Oudolf: Meadow Maker – Part One

It was early April 1999, and we were visiting Hummelo in the Netherlands so I could talk with Piet Oudolf and see his garden. I had read his books and followed his burgeoning design career with interest.  Given my childhood love of wild places, I was always more interested in designers who embraced a naturalist ethos and synthesized that into their work, whether purely aesthetic or ecology-based. When we visited Hummelo, I had just finished an in-depth magazine profile on Michael Hough, a seminal member of the mid-20th century ecological landscape movement. Scotland-born Michael had been a student of Ian McHarg (Design With Nature) at Edinburgh’s College of Art and later at the University of Pennsylvania, before founding the University of Toronto’s Undergraduate program in Landscape Architecture, then moving to York University to teach in their fledgling Environmental Studies program and publish his own book, Cities and Natural Process.  Later on this trip, we would visit the botanical garden at Leiden and Ecolonia in Alphen aan den Rijn, below, an experimental housing development whose architecture, landscape, utilities and infrastructure had been built earlier that decade using principles of ecological design.

Ecolonia-Alphen aan den Rijn

Hummelo

The Oudolfs were generous in greeting us. Anja still ran the nursery then, Kwekerij Oudolf with its goddess Flora…..

Hummelo-1999-Folly

….. and retail customers were busy buying the plants that the Oudolfs raised to use in Piet’s designs. In time, other Dutch growers would become adventurous in their plant introductions; this fact, combined with the demands of Piet’s business and Anja’s busy schedule accommodating groups wanting to tour the garden eventually caused the Oudolfs to close the nursery and build a studio in its place.

Hummelo-1999-Piet Oudolf-nursery

We toured the garden; as it was early spring, not much was in bloom, but the hellebores and wild phlox were lovely.

Hummelo-1999-Piet Oudolf-hellebores

The Stachys byzantina ellipses were still there, along with the famous yew towers and undulating yew hedges which would later be damaged by flooding. Both features were eventually removed and this garden was planted with sweeping perennials.

Hummelo-1999-Stachys circle

The trial beds were impressively ordered – and vital in teaching Piet how various perennials performed: their hardiness, floriferousness, optimal companions, seedhead properties, pollinator attraction, winter persistence, etc.

Hummelo-1999-plant trial beds

It was still very much a place where the Oudolfs worked as a team to expand and improve the palette of plants, but there were abundant touches of simple domesticity.

Hummelo-1999-Piet Oudolf-dog

Piet graciously posed for my camera at a picnic table in a little enclosed garden surrounded by spring-flowering shrubs.

Hummelo-1999-Piet Oudolf

Then we said farewell and headed off to the nearby garden of Eugénie van Weede at Huis Bingerden, below.  At the time of our visit, Eugénie been holding her International Specialist Nursery Days, a 3-day June plant fair attracting thousands of visitors, for four years. (In 2016, there were 37 exhibitors.)  In turn, her inspiration came from Piet and Anja Oudolf, who had held their own annual Hummelo Open Days (later Grass Days) beginning in 1983. By the mid-1990s, visitors numbered in the thousands. Wrote Piet in his rich memoir Hummelo: A Journey Through a Plantsman’s Life, by Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury (The Monacelli Press, 2015): “Our idea was to bring people together. Of course we wanted to create some income, but thought it would also be a good idea to bring a selection of growers who share the same interest in plants, as an advertisement for all of us.”   It was Piet Oudolf, seedman Rob Leopold and Piet’s original partner, nurseryman Romke van de Kaa (formerly Christopher Lloyd’s head gardener in the 1970s) — the men she calls her three ‘godfathers’ — who advised Eugénie on the nurseries she should include in her Nursery Days.Eugenie van Weede-1999-Bingerden

Fast-forward 15 years to a lovely day in August 2014, and there I was photographing the Piet Oudolf-designed entry border at my own local Toronto Botanical Garden, as I’ve been doing regularly for more than a decade. Even though I recall my visit to Hummelo with pleasure, my relationship with the entry border feels less like a connection to the Netherlands than an arrow that points right back to my childhood.  A childhood spent in a meadow.

Janet Davis-Toronto Botanical Garden

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You Can Take the Child Out of the Meadow….

How does one become a meadow maker?  Perhaps it might happen through sheer neglect: abandoning a plot of land to flowering weeds and long grasses which, through a stretch of imagination, might eventually approximate a reasonably attractive community of plants. Though leaving meadow-making to serendipity rarely achieves satisfactory results, it was nevertheless a meadow of happenstance that became my first intimate connection with nature and, by extension, with gardening. For it was an old field across the road from my childhood home in Victoria, B.C., the one just behind the trees at left that you can’t make out in this photo….

Janet Davis-child-Victoria BC

….  that taught me how Spanish bluebells and English daisies emerged in spring as grasses turn green; how California poppies preferred the stony ground to the rich, damp soil where western buttercups grew, the ones we held under our chins to see who liked butter best.

Ranunculus occidentalis-Western buttercup

Oxeye daisies and horsetails, bindweed, tansy and purple clover: these were the meadow weeds I came to love. As little as I was, I felt at home in that chaotic wildness, the old field that promised adventure – even the spittle-bugs that brushed our cheeks as we crawled through the grasses on all fours playing hide-and-seek.

If, as landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy contends in her 1995 classic The Inward Garden, the joyful, treasured places of our childhood become the environments we yearn for as adults, my Victoria field was the idyll I tried to recreate a half-century later in the wild front garden of our Toronto home, below, …..

Janet-Davis-Toronto front garden

….. and in the meadows of our cottage at Lake Muskoka….

Janet Davis-East Meadow- Lake Muskoka

….. where bees and butterflies and birds are welcomed.

Janet-Davis-West Meadow-Lake Muskoka

But meadow-making, for me, though it became somewhat more ‘designed’ and much more interesting than conventional gardening, never approached an art form. It was more about capturing a little corner of ‘wildness’ outside my door. Making a meadow that appears to be wild but is ‘enhanced nature’, that relies on deep knowledge for its plant palette and a wealth of experiment for its dynamic combinations: that is the work of a master. And that is how Piet Oudolf came to design the entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG).

But first, let’s back up a little to 2006.

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Toronto Botanical Garden

In the early 2000’s, when Toronto’s Civic Garden Centre was being transformed from a small, horticulture-related institution to the Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG), a series of 17 themed gardens were designed to skirt around the new LEED building and extend out into the modest 4-acre property. . (You can see my seasonal galleries of all these gardens on the TBG’s website). Landscape architects for some of the gardens included PMA Landscape Architects Ltd. and Sparling Landscape Architects. For the prominent entry walk along the entrance driveway and the long south wall of the building, funding was provided by the Garden Club of Toronto to commission Toronto landscape architect Martin Wade of MWLA, below left, and Piet Oudolf, right, to collaborate on the hardscape and plant design.   Construction-Piet Oudolf & Martin Wade-Toronto Botanical Garden

Garden club member Nancy Laurie (who provided these photographs of the planting) was intimately involved with the beginning of the garden. As she recalls: “The club was asked to design and install a perennial garden that welcomed visitors into a botanical garden. The parameters of the garden area were predetermined by the TBG and the space was limited in height and width variations. It was surrounded by two parking lots, sidewalks and a building.  It would most likely be viewed first by many from inside a moving car. In addition, the other gardens that would eventually make up the new Toronto Botanical Gardens would be of a more formal design. This garden had to stand out from the others. Be different. Announce this is as an avant botanical garden.  Martin Wade proposed including the internationally acclaimed perennial designer Piet Oudolf to join the project as a consultant specifically for the planting design and selection of plants using his much admired naturalistic interpretation of a traditional perennial border garden.”

Apart from having read some of Piet’s books on plant design and hearing him speak at conferences, Nancy had also helped organize several two-day symposiums on the theme of the natural garden. “So I was personally very keen to make this ‘new’ garden paradigm a key element in our new entrance garden,” she recalls. “The garden world of the 1990’s and early 2000’s was embracing a more modern approach to the traditional formal English-style perennial garden. Piet Oudolf’s alternative style is characterized by naturalistic plantings, both in techniques and style, and using plant material that suited the terrain, climate and growing conditions already present in the site. He was recognized at the time as the master of the ‘new perspective of planting’ to paraphrase the title of one of his books. He was ‘The Man’.”

The plant design was complete and ready for reference.

Construction-Toronto Botanical Garden Entry Border Plan

With the hardscaping and rough grading having been done earlier that spring, the garden was ready for planting. But first there were some preliminary steps. The garden was divided into precise grids….

Martin Wade-Entry Border-Toronto Botanical Garden.JPG

………which would facilitate transference of the design outlines onto the ground.

Constructon-Toronto Botanical Garden-Piet Oudolf Checking Grid.J

Once the grid was finished, the outline of the plant groupings themselves was sprayed onto the surface of the soil with a non-toxic paint…..

Construction-Toronto Botanical Garden-spraying grid

…..like a plant-by-number guide.

Construction-Planting Grid-Piet Oudolf-Toronto Botanical Garden

The Garden Club had teams of planting volunteers ready and they listened to words of wisdom from Piet before starting.  Says Nancy Laurie: “The committee gained enormous experience working through this project. At its completion, I prepared a process paper on how to organize and use volunteers to help install a large garden project under the leadership of a landscape architect. Martin Wade used the suggestions to direct the volunteers at his installation of several new gardens at the Royal Botanical Garden the following year.

Construction-Piet-&-Garden-

Then it was out into the garden. Most of the plants were Heritage Perennials from the Ontario division of Valleybrook Gardens.

Construction-Entry Border-Piet Oudolf & Garden Club Members-Toronto Botanical Garden

As Nancy recalls: “Martin Wade managed the process of planting the garden with the help of Garden Club volunteers. Piet was on site for the first planting day to offer suggestions and help. He conferred with Martin and often stepped into the garden with the volunteers to show them how to properly plant a specific variety.”

Piet Oudolf Placing Plants-Toronto Botanical Garden

Nancy Laurie still recalls Piet’s planting lessons from that day.

  • When ready to plant, start at one end of the garden and move backwards so that the soil does not get compacted with foot traffic. Use planks of wood to walk on especially if the soil is wet so it does not compact.
  • Working in one grid area, dig all of the holes for one plant variety.
  • Loosen the soil around the planting hole several inches larger than the plant root system. Step back and look to see if the planting area is what it looks like on the plan. Adjust if needed before actually installing the plants.

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Planted area-Oudolf entry garden-Toronto Botanical Garden

The entry walk was transformed that June into a fluttering, buzzing, verdant place of great beauty, different in all seasons, and indeed different from year to year, as the plants intermingled, possibly even more than their designer intended, and a few disappeared eventually, to be replaced by others. Let’s take a look at a small area, just in front of the glass screen dividing the border from the Floral Hall courtyard just to the north. Here it is on Piet’s plan.

Design-Piet Oudolf-Screen-Toronto Botanical Garden

Here’s the area as it looked in early spring 2006, with its new espaliered ‘Donald Wyman’ crabapples and coppery paperbark maples (Acer griseum).

Design-Piet Oudolf Screen1-April-Toronto Botanical Garden

Now look at it in May 2012, below. Seasonal spring bulbs are part of the changing display in the garden and, when carefully planted, they don’t affect the emergence of the perennials in Piet’s design.

Design-Piet Oudolf Screen2-May-Toronto Botanical Garden

Here it is in June 2011 with the Geranium psilostemon and Astrantia ‘Roma’ flowering amidst the lush green foliage of Deschampsia caespitosa.

Design-Piet Oudolf Screen4-June-Toronto Botanical Garden

I captured this autumn scene in October 2009, with the Deschampsia in flower and toad lilies (Tricyrtis formosa ‘Samurai’) blooming at left.

Design-Piet Oudolf Screen5-October-Toronto Botanical Garden

The genius of the entry garden, for me, especially in the early years when the perennials had not yet seeded about and intermingled, was that it transformed itself through the seasons — especially evident with the ornamental grasses.

Piet Oudolf entry border-seasonal views-Toronto Botanical Garden

Here’s my video of more of the seasonal changes in various parts of the garden.

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Before I move on to more seasonal scenes from the garden, I’d like to acknowledge the hard work of former head gardener Sandra Pella, her assistant gardeners and former TBG horticulturist Paul Zammit, who oversaw the demanding maintenance of the entry garden on a shoestring budget, and with great enthusiasm.

I was there to photograph it each spring….

Seasonal 1c-Spring-Piet Oudolf Entry Garden-Toronto Botanical Garden

……when the brilliance of the tulips, daffodils and small bulbs was especially welcome after the long winter we have in Toronto.

Seasonal 1a-Spring-Piet Oudolf Entry Garden-Toronto Botanical Garden

Families of donors to the garden help to plant new bulbs each autumn, changing the show annually.  The emerging perennials are unaffected by the bulbs growing in their midst.

Seasonal-1d-Spring-Piet-Oud

Late spring featured the big, purple heads of alliums…..

Seasonal 2d-Late spring-Alliums & Hosta 'Blue Angel'-Piet Oudolf entry border-Toronto Botanical Garden

…… and lush peonies like ‘Krinkled White’, here with willow-leaf bluestar (Amsonia tabernaemontana var. salicifolia)…..

Seasonal 2a-Late spring-Paeonia 'Krinkled White' & Amsonia tabernaemontana var. salicifolia-Piet Oudolf Border-Toronto Botanical Garden

….. and ‘Bowl of Beauty’, with mauve Phlomis tuberosa ‘Amazone’, left and the white form of the mourning widow geranium (G. phaeum f. album) behind …..

Seasonal 2b-Late spring-Paeonia 'Bowl of Beauty'-Piet Oudolf Border-Toronto Botanical Garden.

…. and stunning red ‘Buckeye Belle’ with Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ in the background.

Seasonal 2c-Late spring-Paeonia 'Buckeye Belle' & Salvia-Piet Oudolf Border-Toronto Botanical Garden.

But the summer months are when the Oudolf garden hits its stride, as the lush, ornamental grasses begin to fountain around the stems of the flowering perennials.  In early summer, deep-red Knautia macedonica pops out like dots in a pointillist painting.

Seasonal 3a-early summer-Piet Oudolf entry border-Toronto Botanical Garden

I love knautia for its long flowering season and its attractiveness to all kinds of bees.

Knautia macedonica with bumble bee-bombus-Piet Oudolf border

Here are three Oudolf favourites:  from rear, mauve ‘Fascination’ Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum), ‘Blue Fortune’ anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) and the lime-green, needled leaves of Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii), half-way between its pale-blue spring flowers and brilliant gold fall colour.

Seasonal 3b-early summer Piet Oudolf entry border-Veronicastrum virginicum 'Fascination'-Agastache 'Blue Fortune'-TBG

A little later comes the beautiful echinacea show, here with the salmon daylily Hemerocallis ‘Pardon Me’ and ‘Veitch’s Blue’ globe thistle (Echinops ritro), which is…..

Seasonal 4a-midsummer-Piet-Oudolf-des

….. another exceptional bee plant.

Bees on Echinops ritro 'Veitch's Blue'

August is my favourite time in the garden, as the grasses reach their stately heights and the late-season perennials flower.  Here’s a little vignette of what you see as you do the entry walk in early-mid August:  violet spikes of blazing star (Liatris spicata); creamy-white rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium); the lush, burgundy flowers of the various Joe Pye weeds (Eutrochium sp.); the small, dark-red wands of burnet(Sanguisorba sp.); and echinaceas.

Seasonal 4b-late summer-Piet Oudolf-designed entry border-Toronto Botanical Garden-Summer

Below we have the self-seeding annual Verbena bonariensis, left, leadplant (Amorpha canescens) past its flowering, centre, and red-spiked ‘Firetail’ persicaria (P. amplexicaulis) at right.

Seasonal 4c-Piet-Oudolf-des

By October, the Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) on the stone wall of the Raymond Moriyama-designed Flower Hall has turned bright red and the seedheads and fall colour of the big grasses in the Oudolf border take centre stage, along with a few asters and goldenrods that have sneaked into the border from other parts of the botanical garden.

Seasonal 5a-Autumn-Symphyot

One year, aromatic aster Symphyotrichum oblongifolium ‘October Skies’, below, native to the central and eastern United States, looked stunning punctuated with echinacea seedheads.  But this lovely aster, used by Piet at Lurie Garden in Chicago, seems to have diminished in subsequent years, part of the inevitable reality of plant experimentation, something to which Piet Oudolf has paid great attention over the decades.

Seasonal 5b-Autumn-Symphyotrichum oblongifolium 'October Skies'

Perennial seedheads are an important part of the seasonal show in the garden; these are the mocha-brown October seedheads of the yarrow Achillea millefolium ‘Walther Funcke’, with silvery Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Little Spire’ at right and bronze Astilbe ‘Purpurlanze’ in the background.

Seasonal 5c-Autumn-Ct

And provided that repeated heavy, wet snowfalls do not knock down the plants and ruin the show, the entry garden demonstrates the beauty of the persistent seedheads and stems throughout winter.  The grass at left is Korean feather grass (Calamagrostis brachytricha).

Seasonal 6-Piet Oudolf-designed entry border-Toronto Botanical Garden-Winter

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Plants and Memories

Many of the plants in the entry garden are part of Piet Oudolf’s personal history: breeding successes of the German or Dutch plantsmen who were part of his circle – and horticultural education – since the beginning of his design career and life in Hummelo.  People like Ernst Pagels (1913-2007), of Leer, himself a student of Karl Foerster, the iconic nurseryman who sheltered Jews in his nursery during the Second World War and whose name is memorialized in a well-known feather reed grass (Calamagrosis x acutiflora). As explained in Hummelo: A Journey Through a Plantsman’s Life, in the 1980s Piet Oudolf travelled often across the border into Germany to visit Pagels at his nursery where they would talk plants. “We went to get the newest plants, and to bring them home…. and we exchanged a lot.”   Among the Ernst Pagels jewels that live in the TBG’s entry garden are Achillea ‘Walther Funcke’….

Pagels-Achillea 'Walther Funcke'-Piet Oudolf border-Toronto Botanical Garden

…. Astilbe chinensis var. tacquetii ‘Purpurlanze’ and Stachys officinalis ‘Hummelo’ …..

Pagels-Astilbe chinensis var. tacquetii 'Purpurlanze' & Stachys officinalis 'Hummelo'

…. Phlomis tuberosa ‘Amazone’……

Pagels-Phlomis tuberosa 'Amazone'-Piet Oudolf Border-Toronto Botanical Garden

…. and Salvia nemorosa ‘Amethyst’, shown here with Allium cristophii.

Pagels-Salvia 'Amethyst'-Piet Oudolf Border-Toronto Botanical Garden

Piet’s Dutch friend and fellow plantsman Coen Jansen is responsible for the tall meadowrue Thalictrum ‘Elin’.

Coen Jansen-Thalictrum 'Elin'

And his German colleague Cassian Schmidt, director of the famous garden at Hermannshof, (thanks Tony Spencer for that great blog entry) has his own name memorialized in the beautiful, Kurt Bluemel-raised fountain grass Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Cassian’, shown here with the statice Limonium latifolium…..

Cassian Schmidt-Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Cassian' & Limonium latifolium-Toronto Botanical Garden

As for Piet Oudolf himself, long before he designed the planting of the TBG’s entry border, he was selecting his own plants and registering them. In 1998, the year before I visited him at Hummelo, he joined with two other growers to launch their company Future Plants, “to market their introductions and to protect their work through Plant Breeder’s Rights.”  As explained in Hummelo: A Journey…, these plants were often put into production in the U.S. before Dutch nurseries had started to raise them.  Among the Piet Oudolf-propagated plants in the entry garden are the pale-mauve hybrid monkshood Aconitum ‘Stainless Steel’….

Piet Oudolf introduction-Aconitum 'Stainless Steel'

……. Astrantia major ‘Roma’…..

Piet Oudolf introduction-Astrantia-major 'Roma'

….. Echinacea purpurea ‘Vintage Wine’, with its lovely dark stems….

Piet Oudolf introduction-Echnacea purpurea 'Vintage Wine'-Toronto Botanical Garden

….. Monarda ‘Scorpion’…..

Piet Oudolf Introduction-Monarda 'Scorpion'-1

….. Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Little Spire’, a compact Russian sage shown below with Calamintha nepeta (a fabulous bee combo!)…..

Piet Oudolf introduction-Perovskia 'Little Spire' with Calamintha nepeta

….. Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firedance’…..

Piet Oudolf- Introduction-Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Firedance'

….. Salvia ‘Madeline’…..

Piet Oudolf Introduction-Salvia 'Madeline'

….. Salvia verticillata ‘Purple Rain’ (this photo with Achillea ‘Anthea’ was made at the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington, near Toronto) …..

Piet Oudolf introduction-Salvia verticillata 'Purple Rain'

…. and finally the spectacular Culver’s root Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Fascination’, given its tongue-in-cheek name by Piet Oudolf because of its genetic tendency to ‘fasciation’, a flattening of the flower spike.

Piet Oudolf introduction-Veronicastrum virginicum 'Fascination'

That concludes the first part of my two-part blog on the entry garden at the Toronto Botanical Garden. In Part Two, I drill down into Piet Oudolf’s garden plan to show you some terrific plant combinations, and some of my favourite plants and why.

PS – if you’re a fan of New York’s High Line, I have photographed the Oudolf plantings there in three seasons, and blogged about a few of those visits as well. Here’s the High Line in early May and a two-part blog on the High Line in mid-June.

This summer, I’m looking forward to visiting Lurie Garden in Chicago’s Millennium Park.

20 thoughts on “Piet Oudolf: Meadow Maker – Part One

  1. This is truly an incisive, loving, and detailed overview of an important, but sometimes overlooked Oudolf garden.

    It’s also worth considering where the Toronto garden stands in the designer’s pantheon – mid-way between the earlier block planting style of the Lurie in Chicago (2003) and the more freely intermingled matrix design of the High Line (2009). Toronto exhibits features of both with intermingled block planting, a quality which has definitely become wilder over time. That’s where maintenance on a shoestring can wield a strong influence – by either seeking to preserve or abandon the integrity of the original design.

    • Yes, Tony, so true. And amazing to me to see the ‘legibility’, as Piet calls it, in the earlier sequential photos compared to the later ones. I like them both, provided certain aggressive species don’t over-run it. More on that in Part Two. And thank you for the kind words.

  2. Thank you for sharing so generously of your time and talent, Janet. I am so lifted up and inspired by your text and photographs. I grew up in Tsawwassen, BC, in the late 60’s, with empty fields behind our home for much of my childhood and identify with your love of wild spaces and connection with natures cycles. Your email blogs are a constant delight to me and I thought it was time to say ‘thanks’. Many blessings –
    Brenda the Gardener (now living near High Park!)

    • Thank you Brenda! I know Tsawwassen well, as my brother and cousin both live there. “It’s always sunnier in…..” 🙂 Glad to hear you’re another child of the wild spaces; it makes an impression. Your words are precious to me. Thanks again.

  3. Hi Janet- as usual your pictures are so alive, how I wish I had a green thumb.
    For now, I will just enjoy your postings. Maybe I can see these gardens
    some day. Thank you for sharing.
    Amelia

    • Thank you, Amelia! You don’t need a green thumb! You have physician’s hands! Much more important, in the grand scheme…. 🙂

  4. Thanks for this detailed, erudite, and enjoyable post, Janet. It’s not only a history of the Oudolf garden at Toronto Botanical Garden, it’s also a history of much of the New Perennial movement and of its predecessors. This is one to keep for future reference. I look forward to the next installment.

    • Thank you James. And coming from you, with your deep and studied appreciation of design, I take this as a great compliment. I have been photographing Piet’s garden for so long, I felt I owed it — and him — a little spotlight here. I hope you enjoy the next blog, too.

  5. Wonderful photos & blog Janet, love how the TBG has progressed. I just stumbled upon your blog today and I am smitten. Your writing is engaging.
    I am huge fan of Piet’s work, I am trying the same on a summer property in a zone 4b location complete with beaver , deer & mice / voles just to add to the fun. Budget and progress much less than the TBG’s and I am the sole Gardener. Keep up the great writing.

    • Beaver, deer & voles. I know your pain (Muskoka). Thank you for the kind words. If it’s any good to you, Roy Diblik’s advice is to start (a prairiesque planting) with the more vulnerable plants before putting in the agressive ones a few years later. And, from personal experience, I might skip the Indian grass…. 🙂

      Be sure to read Part Two, which is now online and linked from this blog.

      • Many thanks for the valued insights, although muskoka can be tough it gets great snow cover to protect tender ones.

        I am using a matrix of grasses (60% ) and perennials (40 %) along with some specimen plants, groups and a few scatter plants, Grasses are a mix of deschampsia cespitosa , Sporobolus heterolepis, with specimen grasses of Panicum Varieties. it is about 1/4 to 1/2 acre, which i am doing in small amounts due to cost and logistics ( lower back). The property is between Bancroft and Peterborough along a well moving stream ( hence the beaver & deer)

        • That’s enough property to make a good meadow. I know the lower back restriction very well (L4-5). I cut my Muskoka meadows back myself in November – with hedge shears. Usually in freezing rain or something wonderful like that. But in mid July, it’s a delight. All the best with your project!

  6. Simply stunning. It’s amazing how he gets the height of the plants and color combinations right. The final result is natural and not forced yet he still achieves the palette of a Monet painting!

    • Lulu…. decades of intimate knowledge of the plants, beginning with his own nursery and trial gardens at Hummmelo.

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