Piet Oudolf At Work
By Piet Oudolf, with an introduction by Cassian Schmidt; London and New York City: Phaidon, 2023; 276 pages, $79.95.
Reviewed by Rosetta S. Elkin, ASLA

?For me garden design is not just about plants, it is about emotion, atmosphere, a sense of contemplation.? So begins Piet Oudolf in his latest monograph, At Work, adopting a tone of wisdom and mischief. The wisdom in this book is offered freely across a selection of hand-drawn planting plans that are reproduced with meticulous care. Each drawing offers a lesson to the reader in ?How to Oudolf.? A kind of manual for designing nature without ecology is found in the series of artful drawings that reveal a strategy for working with plants through quantity, species, spacing, and cultivar. Here, he seems to say, is my secret recipe. The mischief is found in its provocation?go ahead, copy it. I dare you to try. In any recipe, quantities matter. And Oudolf has a gift for measuring the elusive behavior of plants. Atmosphere is achieved in parts by calculation and proportion. At Work is a hefty volume chock-full of photographs in addition to drawings. Oudolf?s ?healthy obsession with plants? comes through in the essays, quotes, and interviews. None of the essays are written by Oudolf, which is a relief. Because so many garden books are written by gardeners, they miss the essence of the projects, filling pages with instructions rather than context. The authors, however, widely quote his approach to design. A reci...