Author Description

A sumptuous introduction to the visionary gardens of Piet Oudolf--designer of New York's High Line garden--and the Dutch firm LOLA This inspiring volume presents the garden vision of Piet Oudolf and LOLA Landscape Architects. One of the world's foremost living garden designers, and a leading figure of the "New Perennial" movement, Piet Oudolf (born 1944) has completed such famous projects as the garden for the High Line and Battery Park in New York, Oudolf Garden Detroit at Belle Isle Park, Delaware Botanic Gardens, Toronto Botanical Garden Entry Garden Walk, the Serpentine Gallery's interior garden and the Oudolf Gardens at Hauser & Wirth Somerset. LOLA Landscape Architects is an architectural firm based in Rotterdam that specializes in transforming public spaces, often postindustrial sites, through the optimization of the landscape's natural ecosystem. This beautifully realized volume takes the reader on an international journey through the gardens designed by Oudolf and LOLA, including a number of collaborative projects between the two, presenting the reimagination of public spaces and demonstrating the application of the gardening style of Sharawadgi, in which rigid lines and symmetry are avoided to give the scene an organic, naturalistic appearance. The pursuit of Sharawadgi binds Oudolf and LOLA together in the goal of designing landscapes that appear to have emerged "naturally" yet evoke an overwhelming experience and inexplicable beauty. From the High Line in New York to the gardens of Hauser & Wirth in Somerset and the Star Maze in Tytsjerk to the Leisure Lane in Parkstad, this volume introduces us to Oudolf's and LOLA's ultimate vision for the future: a global forest against the warming of the earth, a dream that can start in anyone's garden, however big or small.