Meeting your Idols can be tricky, will they live up to your expectations, or will they have feet of clay?
Last month, I went to a lecture at the Garden Museum in London, the topic was the High Line in New York. Amongst others, speaking for the first time in the UK about this project was Piet Oudolf who designed the planting for the High Line.
The High Line is a public park built on a 1930’s derelict elevated freight rail line above the streets of Manhattan’s West Side. It was going to be demolished, but in 1999 local people in the area fought to preserve and transform the Line which is now owned by the City of New York and maintained and operated by the Friends of the High Line. Over 3.7 million people visited the High Line in 2011 – so no more needs to be said about how successful this urban transformation has been.
Piet Oudolf is a Dutch garden designer, nurseryman (with more than 20 years experience of growing plants and breeding new perennial plants), master plantsman, author and leading figure in the ‘New Perennials Movement’, using drifts of perennials, chosen for their colour, structure, reliability and attractiveness.
His style of speaking is quiet and low-key. He draws you in and allows you to share in his knowledge and many years of hands on experience working with perennials around the world, both in private gardens and large public spaces. Above all, he gave the audience an all too brief, but fascinating in-depth glimpse of his thinking behind the High Line naturalistic planting – providing an intense sense of wilderness in the middle of a city. But also the nuts and bolts of why he chose a certain plant, what plants he puts with it and how he moves the planting design between the different planting areas of the High Line, wilderness, woodland, grassland, north american and cultivated perennials. I very much hope to hear him speak again – this Idol did not disappoint.
The next time I visit New York, the High Line is at the top of my to-do-list.