The High Line in New York has become a firm tourist favourite
A developing style
Cut to 2010 and the planting on the High Line, the raised linear park on the
lower west side of New York. The character is startlingly different, to such
an extent that it seems almost like the work of a different hand.
Here, the planting is intermingled, less obviously painterly, and much more
like a miraculous slice of nature than an artful arrangement of plants. To
heighten the quality of nature in the city, the composition is almost
entirely of American natives, planted in ecological groupings and
associations that create an arresting contrast to the smart steel and
concrete detailing of the park and the urban grit that surrounds you. The
volume of grass is up, the flowers down, and the content and spatial
character is constantly shifting like a linear narrative as you walk by.
There are woodland bits, open bits and everything in between.
A new book entitled Planting: A New Perspective (see below), written by
Noel Kingsbury, but prepared in collaboration with Oudolf, charts the
progression of his work between these two extremes of style and rightly
places him as the pivotal planting designer of the last quarter century. The
most riveting part of the book shows planting plans varying from the
Pensthorpe type of project of blocky planting, which seemed so naturalistic
at the time, to the more recent work such as the High Line, characterised by
much greater interweaving of plants and a close mimicry of plant
associations and patterns found in nature.
Oudolf’s early work was a great influence throughout the temperate world
because it was bold and delicate at the same time. He looked at the way
plants behaved throughout their growth cycle and was as interested in how
they looked when they were dying as much as when they were in flower. This
in itself is as revolutionary as it gets in the world of planting design,
but it is perhaps fair to say that the style was more painterly than it was
ecologically inspired. Over the past 10 years this has changed, and while
much of this has to do with his regular trips to see plants in the wild,
particularly in the US and eastern Europe, Oudolf would highlight the
influence of several key practitioners working in the intermingled style.
Perhaps foremost among these would be Cassian Schmidt, the curator of the
garden at Hermanshoff in Weinheim, Germany. In this remarkable garden near
Frankfurt, Schmidt has developed a number of plantings based on a repetitive
grid of plants where each species in the grid is selected as much for the
ecological niche it fulfils as much as for its decorative impact. This type
of “matrix” planting is now the rage in Europe and, as with many things
systematic, Germany is at the forefront of developments. It is now possible
to purchase a perennial plant mix for almost any soil type or aspect, that
has been extensively trialled and tested in government-funded research.
Perhaps the most well known is the Silbersommer (Silver Summer) mix
developed in 1990, which is a matrix of 20 fairly drought-tolerant,
light-demanding and low-growing plants such as Salvia, Achillea,
Phlomis russeliana, grasses and Geranium. You simply order the amount of
plants you need and roll out the carpet. I have seen it in full flower at
Weinheim and it is impressively natural-seeming, even if the concept is a
little frightening
.
Oudolf’s early work at Pensthrope, in Norfolk, was very influential on
British designers
Dan Pearson (whose show at the Garden Museum opens on May 23), is one of the
foremost British planting designers and perhaps the closest in style to
Oudolf in the UK, has also recently been experimenting with matrix planting
in a large Japanese project. But perhaps the extreme practitioner of the
planting matrix approach is James Hitchmough at Sheffield University, who
uses complex seed mixes rather than plants to create astonishing exotic
meadows. While these are mesmerising on the big scale, and in the high
season (from May to October) they don’t have the appeal of an Oudolf
planting in winter and don’t work so well on a more intimate scale.
For Oudolf, planting has always been about creating moods and eliciting
emotions. But the recent, more ecologically informed work, gains an extra
weight by connecting us to how plants grow in the wild. The design becomes
much more about creating a plant community rather than a collection of
individuals. To take one section of planting on the High Line, the plan
shows a loose matrix of grass species planted throughout; in this case a mix
of Panicum virgatum ‘Heiliger Hain’ and Calamagrostis
brachytricha spaced about 1-1.5m apart with about 20 other varieties of
perennial flower spread through in different-sized groups, from one plant
used just singly to another planted in generous groups. The flowers
therefore are always seen within a matrix of grasses, just as they might be
in nature.
These more recent plans, identifying the position of each and every plant, are
of fabulous complexity. Oudolf told me recently how he works for months on
these over the winter, in almost solitary confinement, and I am struck by
the parallel between these drawings and the musical scores of some great
orchestral colourist such as Debussy, where the complexity of the music can
barely be contained on the page. The composer knows exactly the impact on
the orchestral texture, for example, of introducing a few notes on the
bassoon here, just as Oudolf knows the effect of adding another plant. The
difference being that a composer can to some extent try out ideas on the
piano, whereas the plantsman has only his memory and his sense of
composition. It is hard to think of another creative arena where so much
knowledge and understanding is abstracted and codified to such an extent; in
the case of a planting plan, to be translated as a seemingly effortless
expression of natural beauty in four dimensions.
I walked the High Line this January on an icy grey morning. Everything was
shades of brown, but there was a delicacy of line and a legibility to all
the dead plants, which made it beautiful, even at that bleak time of the
year. One can easily imagine the planting here translating to the most
domestic and private of gardens. A repeat matrix is all very well for a big
open space, but for finely nuanced spaces you need a master of detail. In
Oudolf you have someone who thinks by the centimetre at the same time as by
the hectare.
‘Planting: A New Perspective’ by Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury (Timber
Press, RRP £30) is available from Telegraph Books at £26 + £1.35pp.
Call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk
