Hummelo: A Journey Through a Plantsman's Life traces the evolution of Piet Oudolf's personal garden in Gelderland over three decades, revealing the experimental ground from which the New Perennial Style and Dutch Wave movements grew into a global design force.
About This Book
Hummelo is not simply a garden monograph — it is the biography of a design philosophy rendered in loamy soil and perennial structure. Oudolf's property in the eastern Netherlands served simultaneously as home, nursery, and living laboratory: the place where he tested new planting compositions and cultivated varieties that have since entered widespread use. Writer Noel Kingsbury, a longtime friend and noted garden author, situates Hummelo within a broader lineage — from the Dutch counterculture green movement of the 1960s through to prairie restoration in the American Midwest — tracing how naturalistic planting and ecological thinking converged in one garden and one career. For landscape designers and serious horticulturalists, this is essential reading on the relationship between place, process, and design evolution.
Key Features
- 416 pages of lush photography and short essays on planting technique, garden history, and design philosophy
- Text by Noel Kingsbury; garden and design subject Piet Oudolf
- Essays on scatter planting and matrix planting techniques, with profiles of famed designers Karl Foerster, Henk Gerritsen, Rob Leopold, Ernst Pagels, and Mien Ruys
- Published by The Monacelli Press
What You'll Discover
- How Hummelo functioned as a testing ground for perennial varieties and compositional ideas that now define contemporary naturalistic planting design
- The ecological underpinnings of the Dutch Wave and New Perennial Style — why Oudolf's rejection of short-lived annuals in favour of structurally compelling perennials was as much an argument about sustainability as it was about aesthetics
- The broader intellectual lineage of Oudolf's work, connecting Dutch counterculture, European garden history, and American prairie restoration into a coherent design movement
- Practical insight into specific planting strategies — scatter plants, matrix planting, seasonal silhouette — through short essays embedded within the photographic narrative
About the Author
Piet Oudolf is a Dutch landscape designer widely credited with leading the New Perennial Style and Dutch Wave movements in garden design, with major public plantings including the High Line in New York City and the Lurie Garden at Chicago's Millennium Park. Noel Kingsbury is a noted garden author and longtime personal friend of Oudolf, whose text places Hummelo within the wider context of gardening history and ecological design thinking.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 416
- Dimensions: 17.4 x 2.86 x 23.37 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781580935708
- Publisher: The Monacelli Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Landscape designers, horticulturalists, and garden enthusiasts drawn to naturalistic planting, ecological design, and the design philosophy behind the New Perennial Style.