Perennial Management, The Piet Oudolf Way
Taught by Piet Oudolf & Noel Kingsbury
Course Description
This course reveals Piet Oudolf’s revolutionary plantings of The High Line, New York City’s famous landscaped railway line that cuts through the centre of the city. Throughout the course, you will experience unique top down drone footage of The High Line and The Battery Park, so you can see a bird’s eye view of the plantings and their context.
During the videos, you will walk along The High Line discussing and observing the plants, with Piet Oudolf himself who designed the planting, and Dr Noel Kingsbury his long term co-writer. As part of the course, we also hear from Andi Pettis, the acclaimed Director of Horticulture for The High Line who reveals fascinating insights on how they continue to maintain and manage the planting as the site evolves. This is the first course of its kind in the world.
Once the context is set, for understanding the evolution and maintenance of perennial plantings in harsh city environments, Dr Noel Kingsbury takes you through a practical approach of how to plant and maintain this type of landscape design. The second part of the course features the New York Battery Park designed by Oudolf as an earlier work, with Dr Noel Kingsbury Gabriela Marin (Chief Horticulturalist), Director of Horticulture for The Battery.
Finally you will learn the real ‘how tos’ of achieving the types of designs that Piet Oudolf has successfully pioneered in sites like The High Line and The Battery. Dr Noel Kingsbury talks to Helen Picton from Old Court Nurseries near Malvern in the UK, to teach you the practical material relevant to lessons 2 and 3.
As an important part of this unique course, we were privileged to work with both Piet, Noel and the team run so successfully by Andi Pettis at The High Line. To this day, The High Line is able to sustain its beautiful plants, with a team of gardeners, and the entire project is funded by donations. Please join this amazing movement by donating to The High Line to keep this pioneering project alive and to help us spread the word globally.
Course outline
The life of perennial plantings
Perennial management through the year
The evolution of perennial plantings
Managing plant stress
Choose how you want to learn
The Expert option
RecommendedDevelop your learning further with marked assignments and personal tuition from Piet Oudolf & Noel Kingsbury
- Start course whenever you like
- 4 weeks tutor access for personalised assignment feedback & coaching
- 4 assignments marked by Piet Oudolf & Noel Kingsbury
- Certificate of completion from Piet Oudolf & Noel Kingsbury
- Online classroom with up to 20 classmates
- 4 lessons with expert videos & notes
- Group chat & direct message with tutor & classmates
- Lifetime access to videos, notes & classroom
$299.00The Peer option
Discover the benefits of group learning in an online interactive classroom of no more than 20 people. Get the most from shared knowledge and community study
- Start course whenever you like
- Practise what you learn with your peers
- Online classroom with up to 20 classmates
- 4 lessons with expert videos & notes
- 4 course assignments
- Group chat & direct message classmates
- Lifetime access to videos, notes & classroom
$99.00
How it works
About Piet Oudolf & Noel Kingsbury
Piet Oudolf’s landscapes are as peopled as they are planted. Folks flock to them, whether it’s the High Line in New York, the meadows at Hauser & Wirth’s art gallery in Somerset, or the Olympic Park in Stratford, to name a few.
I looked at landscape gardening as a career alternative to my family business of catering. I'm probably best known as the landscape designer from the Netherlands! And I consider myself along with Noel Kingsbury as one of the leading figures of the ‘New Perennial’ or ‘New Wave Planting’ movement, using bold blocks of perennials and grasses to create Prairie style designs. My wife and I first opened a nursery in Hummelo, the Netherlands back in the 1980s, this is where my planting style emerged with strong block-type groupings based on structure and texture as much as colour. As my design style progressed I have focused on the perennial meadow, mimicking nature in my planting style. Nature is my biggest influence.
It comes as a surprise to some people that I'm also an early adopter of some technologies. I love using my iphone to capture videos and photos as I work. I have a large presence on instagram, and I'm excited to share my work through teaching on Learning with Experts. Dr Noel Kingsbury and I have been collaborators for over 25 years, and Noel will be with you in the classroom marking your work, while Noel and I developed and filmed the course materials together. We are planning more courses over time here too. I hope you enjoy your online courses with me.