Piet Oudolf Garden Changes

Round one of the renovations to Piet Oudolf's garden are about to begin. I'll be a little more specific about what's about to happen in today's blog. Several varieties are coming out of the garden for various reasons.

Eric and Fakundo are working hard on the removal of Panicum 'Dallas Blues' and Salvia 'Amethyst'. These two plants are coming out because for one reason or another, we no longer sell these varieties. 'Dallas Blues', especially in production was a magnet for rust. We love the look of the Panicum, so we are replacing it with Roy Diblik's introduction, 'Northwind'. 'Northwind' will give the same verticle element to the garden that 'Dallas Blues' has without the rust. Salvia 'Amethyst' left our product line because of a lack of sales. It is a great looking plant, but if sales cannot support it, it goes away. In this case, Salvia 'Pink Friesland' will replace it in the garden. It will be a little bit shorter, but that will work in this instance.

In this part of the garden, Limonium latifolium is being removed. I'm waiting on some plants for the back part of this garden where more of this plant resides, but I don't have the replacement yet. In the section that has been emptied, we will be planting a small number of Geranium 'Brookside' and Heuchera 'Mocha'. Limonium left our product line, because the more and more we tried to promote the plant, the less and less we'd sell. Hasta la vista Limonium.

In this area, Eric is working on an area that will have Veronica 'Eveline' planted. The Limonium had reseeded in most of the garden, so he's removing parts of it from all over. In it's place will go the Veronica. The other difficult plants in the garden that are being removed are Coreopsis tripteris and Aster novae-angliae. Neither of these were ever intended for the garden, but reseeded from other locations.




Another interesting thing happened when walking through the gardens. When Piet first showed up, we talked about removing all the Tradescantia from the garden. Then we found this wonderful combination of Tradescantia and Zizia aptera. Both of us were impressed by this combination, so we plan on using it in another location. While the picture here is of Tradescantia ohiensis and Zizia aptera, we will be using Tradescantia 'Concord Grape'. This picture was taken at Nelson Lake a couple days after Piet visited, reaffirming to me, that this is a "natural" combination for the garden.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to read. I hope you enjoyed the first round of changes that we will be making. Stay tuned for many more. Until next time, have a great day!