n international profile is a rare thing among even the most accomplished garden designers, but plantsman Piet Oudolf (pronounced Pete OW-dolf) has gained just that as the leader of the New Perennials movement in planting design. He has been feted in England for at least the past decade with high-profile projects such as the Millennium Garden at Pensthorpe nature reserve, a long double border at the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden atWisley, and more recently a new extravaganza at Scampston Hall,Yorkshire. Now American designers have noted his skills. His work can be seen in The Battery in NewYork City, where a once-dank and uninviting municipal landscape of London plane trees has been opened up and a ground tapestry of shade-loving perennials added. For the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park in Chicago, Oudolf created a wild-seeming field of perennials and grasses woven in shifting tones of a delicacy that belies the hardiness of the plants. He has also been hired to contribute to the conversion of the High Line railway into an aerial park in NewYork. It seems that this is just the beginning. So what is it that makes this designer so hot? Oudolf, a big blond Dutchman, started his gardening career at age 25, after deciding against going into the family restaurant business. His main influences were Karl Foerster, who pioneered the naturalistic look in Germany’s public parks, and Mien Ruys, the Dutchwoman who blended planting skill with innovative modernist design ideas.At his own garden at Hummelo, near Arnhem in the eastern Netherlands, Oudolf developed a planting style that is wholly dependent on the structure and form of artfully clipped hedges and perennial plants, particularly grasses. By the mid-1990s the style had been given the “New Perennials” tag, and since then it has inspired numerous disciples in Holland, France, Germany, Sweden and Britain. One of the best examples of his work in Europe is the Dromparken in Enkoping, Sweden. The New Perennials concept is relatively new in the United States. However, over the past 30 years,Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden, based in Washington, D.C., who have built up one of the most successful garden-design practices in the country, have brought exposure to similar planting ideals. PlantsmanWolfgang Oehme comes from a postwar European planting tradition similar to Oudolf’s, but his work is tauter, more clean-lined and less horticulturally complex. It is intriguing to see how the road has forked. What is revolutionary about Oudolf’s approach is the way he claims to disregard color entirely when planning borders. “The form and structure of plants is more in-
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