One glance past the open cluster of cedar-shingle Nantucket cottages to the expansive meadow rising in the courtyard beyond, and it is unmistakeable: only an Oudolf is an Oudolf. Choose your path to look closer. You can either continue along the raised boardwalk that links these rustic structures to a minimalist swimming pool, or step across to crunch along a wide gravel pathway, which winds through a prismatic glow of late grasses and perennials, leading into the ribboned heart of the meadow experience.
What makes it so Oudolf? It might be the charismatic aura of telltale prairie forbs, scattered like ghost riders across the wave-like mounds of the garden landscape. The silvery, thimbled spears of Eryngium yuccifolium mark the high points, joined by the winged figures of Baptisia ‘Lunar Eclipse’, their looping spires of oval seedpods now cinder black.
Nearer to the path, the teardrop purses of Asclepias tuberosa are filled to bursting with silken seed, while tangles of wilder Echinacea pallida and Echinacea tenesseensis poke out above the grasses like charred matchsticks in artful disarray.
Perhaps what makes it quintessential Piet is what you don’t see, for here is epic restraint. There are quieter moments painted in the spectral blues of Schizachyrium grass and the golden threads of Amsonia hubrichtii that heighten the spaces between all the parts. Imitators might get the plants right, but seldom the restraint. Therein lies the maestro’s touch.
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In the courtyard, Piet opted for bolder strokes with a more distilled planting palette. “It was my intuition not to make it too complicated because of how it might be taken care of when I leave,” he says. For the upper edges of the garden, it required special finesse to blend the plantings into the wetland conservation area beyond. Here Piet selected plants all indigenous to the island to create a series of “small matrices to bleed into the landscape”.
What makes it so Oudolf? The telltale prairie forbs, scattered like ghost riders across the wave-like mounds of the garden
The project flowed out of the masterplan from landscape architect Joe Wahler of Stimson Studio, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Cape Cod. Both houses and garden were completely new builds from the ground up, and Piet weighed in during early visits to help orient the landscape and position its practical features. What started out as just a front garden around the main house grew in scope to include the courtyard, entry drive and low woodlands, planted from scratch using hundreds of new trees and shrubs to screen out the outside world.
Speaking of isolation, it is hard to imagine that such an idyllic garden space was planted back in 2021 during the dark days of the Covid pandemic. Travel restrictions made it impossible for Piet to visit the garden himself. Instead, he entrusted the entire workflow, from sourcing 50,000 plants to laying out and installing each of the planting areas, to a trio of collaborators wearing surgical masks who wryly dubbed themselves The Three Musketeers.
Perhaps what makes this garden quintessential Piet is what you don’t see, for here is epic restraint
Frequent collaborator Tom de Witte, a Dutch landscape designer, had recently vel from Europe to take charge of the project on the ground. Long Island-based designer Hanna Packer oversaw the daunting logistics of sourcing and transporting all the trees and plants during lockdown from specialist nurseries on the US mainland and in the Netherlands.
Rounding out the trio was Austin Eischeid, a young D’Artagnan from the Midwest, who had acquired his rapier skills in planting design at both Hermannshof in Germany and later Chanticleer in Pennsylvania, before teaming up for a few Oudolf projects Stateside in the years before the pandemic.
The Nantucket project rolled out in strategic phases, starting with contouring the flattish landscape to create interest and improve drainage, an Oudolf trademark. Piet kept track of progress from his home in Hummelo via morning FaceTime sessions with Tom, who panned the camera around the site for Piet to comment and make the fine adjustments.
The woodland may have been designed on paper but the complex business of siting so many trees required being there in person. Piet gives all credit to his Musketeers. “Tom and Austin did most of the work. I saw the garden for the very first time when it was finished.”
This project would never have happened but for one woman’s verve and determination. Never a gardener herself, the client first fell for Piet’s work through a “gorgeous Nantucket garden” profiled in The New York Times Magazine. She cold-called Hummelo out of the blue, speaking to Piet’s wife Anja Oudolf, who answered, “Piet’s not here. Phone back in six months.” The client kept following up, finally snagging a chance to walk with Piet on New York’s famous elevated park, the High Line, trailed by a Dutch film crew. Over a cup of tea afterwards, he agreed to take on the work.
The clients feel like they are living inside a painting, with magical views from every window. Who needs curtains?
On Nantucket island, where all new construction must conform to the 19th-century shingle-style standard set by the Quakers, she decided the property “would be all about the gardens”. Now four years in, she and her husband feel like they are “living inside a painting” with magical views from every window. As she says, “Who needs curtains?”
It’s an experience she loves to share with friends and family, but not with the thousands of deer that, spurred by habitat loss, now overpopulate the island and routinely decimate local gardens. The deer fence extends around 90 per cent of the property, with a lower fence dug 60cm down to keep out the rabbits. Moles and voles have been dissuaded to feast on the grasses by an earlier cutback in late autumn.
In terms of management, Hanna Packer pops in from the mainland on occasion to help troubleshoot, while local gardener Dora Chacon visits with her two-person crew twice a week, and Bartlett Tree Experts looks after the woodland. When your home garden is an original Oudolf, the upkeep is worth every penny, because the rewards are priceless.
8 Oudolf plants for autumn
1 Vernonia ‘Summer’s Surrender’
Narrow-leaved foliage in a mounding habit with profuse purple flower clusters in early autumn. Mildew-resistant pollinator magnet. Height and spread: 1.2m x 1.8m. RHS H7, USDA 4a-9b†.
2 Echinacea pallida
Offers the prospect of a long-term relationship, unlike many in the genus. The bristly cones are as characterful in autumn as its drooping pink rays in summer. 1.2m x 50cm. RHS H5, USDA 4a-8b.
3 Parthenium integrifolium
Tall and long-blooming American feverfew. Wears a low upright skirt of leaves crinkled like arrowheads. White corymbs turn to whale-bone scrimshaw in autumn. 1.2m x 50cm. RHS H7, USDA 4a-8b.
4 Baptisia ‘Lunar Eclipse’
This eye-catching, complex hybrid sports two-tone spires loaded with pea flowers shifting from lemon-cream to violet. 90cm x 1.2m. RHS H7, USDA 4a-9b.
5 Amsonia hubrichtii
Masses of starry blue-grey flowers are a spring warm-up act for this shrubby clump-former, whose greater glory is pure autumn gold. Dazzling en masse. 1m x 50cm. RHS H7, USDA 5a-8b.
6 Schizachyrium scoparium ‘Smoke Signal’
Stiffly upright, glaucous, blue-green blades turning scarlet to purple in autumn. Happy to bake in dry sand and full sun. 1.2m x 60cm. USDA 3a-9b.
7 Eryngium yuccifolium
Shoots up from yucca-like basal leaves to form whitish crowns of thistle-like flowers. 1.2m x 60cm. RHS H4, USDA 3a-8b.
8 Symphyotrichum ericoides
Creeping groundcover for dry, gravelly soils with bush-like form exploding into spiky bursts of miniature white daisies from August into autumn. 1m x 50cm. RHS H7, USDA 3a-9b.
*Holds an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society. †Hardiness ratings given where available.
Useful information:
Find out more about Piet’s work at oudolf.com
