Oudolf Field: A Winter Garden

The Oudolf Field is seen first through glass, framed by an enormous window at the back of the gallery. A small ornamental pond features in the foreground, just behind the first of 17 round herbaceous beds divided by grass and gravel paths. Near the centre of the garden sit 10 little grass mounds, circular and neatly edged. At this distance the planting appears as swathes of colour rather than a collection of discernible species.

The colours run into each other, repeated here and there throughout the rectangular space. Although the rain persists under a gloomy sky, amazingly the plants display as luminous and vivid as on a much brighter day. Pink flowers of aster and persicaria are still full of vitality, as is the astonishingly lucid crimson of Echinacea ‘Fatal Attraction’. Grasses range dramatically in green, red, yellow and brown, from stout clumps of Sesleria autumnalis to the light and airy Molinia ‘Transparent’.

And then there are the dead things – Piet’s signature seed heads, black and hardened. Phlomis and Echinacia stems float among the grasses while whole blocks of Eupatorium and Echinops exhibit newly darkened tones; the red and blue of their respective flowers having recently drained away. Their colour and form are integral to the autumn canvas of Piet’s design, intended to remain standing well towards the arrival of spring.