Piet Oudolf needs little introduction in the professional community. The internationally renowned Dutch garden designer has spent decades proving that perennials and grasses can structure space, support ecosystems, and be sustained with realistic maintenance efforts. In a new video by Generatie Alles, Oudolf talks to filmmaker and planting specialist Arjan Boekel of De Bloeimeesters in the garden at Hummelo, about what planting design for the 21st-century issues actually requires, and where the profession still falls short.

The video, shared with Landezine by Piet Oudolf, and De Bloeimeesters, also features Superbloei, a project by LOLA Landscape Architects in Arnhem, Netherlands, where Oudolf’s approach served as an inspiration. Commissioned by the municipality as part of a broader greening strategy, the project started as a temporary garden and became permanent.

The discussion raises a point that remains uncomfortable for at least a part of the profession. Landscape architecture has broadly accepted that biodiversity and ecological planting should be central to public space. In renders and competition entries, they already are, but in practice, planting expertise is too often still limited and underfunded. Maintenance budgets are often cut first, and the result can be observed in many cities through plantings that fail within two years.

At one point in the video, Oudolf remarks that the Superbloei garden could use a café with benches. It is a small comment, but an important one: even the world’s most celebrated planting designer sees a garden that caters only for birds and butterflies as incomplete without quality social space around it.

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