A Never Before Seen Garden by Piet Oudolf

Wild comes naturally to Piet Oudolf. Over the course of his decades-long career, the Dutch landscape maestro has upended conventions of green space, weaving perennials into seemingly untamed meadows and other horticultural marvels. But there’s some serious method to that madness, as outlined in his revealing new monograph, Piet Oudolf at Work (Phaidon, $80). Surveying more than 20 projects, including greatest hits like the High Line and Hauser & Wirth Somerset, the volume juxtaposes detailed photography with the largest collection of his drawings ever published, generously offering a Technicolor road map to his oft-imitated schemes. Among the featured feats is this never-before-seen private garden in the Netherlands, where he deftly transformed a network of green roofs (their substrate no more than 10 inches) into a blurred boundary between home and terrain. Native deciduous trees preside over layers of flowering shrubs, grasses, and shade-tolerant ground flora that evolve season to season in pastoral choreography—with dramatic shifts in density, color, texture, and form. For the omniscient Oudolf it’s all according to plan.