Gerritsen and Oudolf loosely define a "natural garden" as one that contains plants that need minimal maintenance, attract wildlife, and have a "natural appearance." More than 1000 such plants are covered in this encyclopedic guide. Because the authors are garden designers practicing in Northern Europe, the plants featured are mostly suitable to cold-winter, temperate climates with summer rainfall. For other regions, many of the plants covered are unsuitable horticulturally (requiring lots of care) and environmentally (extremely invasive and ecologically destructive). Moreover, the authors support the cautious use of invasive plants, so long as gardeners are vigilantly prepared to control their growth. This advice is clearly unsound, especially considering that plants with invasive characteristics can be serious threats to local habitats. For readers interested in natural gardening, a much more regionally and environmentally appropriate resource is Natural Gardening, edited by John Kadel Boring (Time-Life, 1999). This book is not recommended. Brian Lym, City Coll. of San Francisco Lib.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inquisitive gardeners will savor the engagingly wry tone and provocative opinions contained in this fine compendium. Based upon the long-bandied-about idea of low-maintenance gardening, Gerritsen and Oudolf bring their own distinctive, aesthetic approach to the concept of choosing undemanding plants that also stand as beautiful garden specimens. Inspiring plantsmen, they remind gardeners that perfection is unattainable, so rather than "tarmac your garden," the wise soul learns to work with nature. Tough, playful, and troublesome are attributes that define this richly illustrated book's broad categories of hardy perennials, exuberant self-seeding species, and capricious types that might still be worthy of one's efforts. Taken together, a range of recommended plants holds the promise of bringing an exhilarating naturalism to a garden scheme. Alice Joyce
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"A terrific guide to plants with a Shakerish self-relience." -- Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times Book Review, December 3, 2000
"Dutch garden designers Gerritson and Oudolf share their personal technique for creating beautiful, distinctive gardens that span the seasons." -- FTD in Bloom, Holiday 2000
"More than 200 color photographs and many illustrations make a beautiful case for that flowing naturalistic garden that lies somewhere in your dreams." -- Marianne Binetti, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 23, 2000
"[The authors']book offers each of us the opportunity to create the garden of our dreams." -- Bookseller
A beautiful gift for a gardening friend or for yourself. -- GardenGlories, Summer 2001
A gorgeous compendium of 1200 reliable plants. -- Helen Chesnut, Times Colonist Review, December 16, 2000
Beautifully and lavishly [presents] the aesthetic, indeed often dreamy qualities of plants -- Rudolf Schmid, Taxon, November 2000
Gerritsen and Oudolf have developed the concept of natural gardening to new heights. -- Joanne S. Carpender, www.gardenclub.org, December 17, 2000
Offers each of us the opportunity to create the garden of our dreams. -- Bookseller, October 2000
Book Description
This collaboration deals with a selection of some 1200 plants most suitable for Piet Oudolf's New Wave naturalism, which emphasizes the importance of plant structure in providing all-season interest. Their selection of plants includes the "reliable," the "playful," and, for fanatics, the "troublesome."
From the Publisher
Timber Press has earlier published two critically acclaimed and bestselling books by Piet , the influential Dutch landscape designer: Gardening with Grasses (with Michael King) and Designing with Plants (with Noël Kingsbury). This new collaboration with fellow Dutch plantsman Henk Gerritsen deals with a selection of some 1200 plants most suitable for Oudolf's New Wave naturalism, which emphasizes the importance of plant structures in providing all-season interest.
About the Author
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, Potters Field in London, and his own private garden at Hummelo in the Netherlands.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Winter is perhaps the best time of year for the gardener: the peace! You don't have to do anything, you don't have to think about anything and you don't have to worry about anything. You can just sit next to the fire reading gardening books and dreaming about how wonderful the garden will be next summer. Naturally, you will have to ensure that the garden has been prepared for winter: that is to say readied for winter without having cut back one plant or raked one leaf. Silhouettes of Eupatorium, Aster umbellatus, Veronicastrum virginicum and the beautiful black spherical seed heads left by the monardas which even in the depths of winter smell like Earl Grey tea. Grasses, of course, especially Miscanthus with its amazing silver plumes, and a lot of Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' against the backdrop of a neatly clipped hedge or just against the chill winter wind: it is always sad when you have to cut it back again in spring. And in front, close to the house so you can see them from your armchair, the strong, fleshy shoots of hellebores, working their way through the fallen leaves and remains of last summer's border intones of apple green, darkest purple, white and pale pink, exactly as you would see them in nature, in the Balkans. And, naturally, a specimen of Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn' next to the door so you can experience the delicious scent of its flowers every time you go in and out. A garden lovely enough to lift the spirits even on the most sombre and overcast days of winter. And when it has frozen and frost lies everywhere, or when it has snowed, it is so beautiful that you can sit, next to your cat, and stare outside for hours with your nose pressed against the window pane admiring the ghostly forms.
