A Stunning Look at the Roots of the New American Garden movement
Ornamental Grasses: Wolfgang Oehme and the New American Garden by Stefan Leppert is an interesting mix of biography, history lesson and landscape design primer. For a landscape designer, like myself, previewing the book was like eating a big bowl of my favorite ice cream – a guilty pleasure.
In case you’re not familiar with the New American Garden movement, suffice it to say that Wolfgang Oehme and his design partner, James van Sweden, are the fathers of the movement. A New American Garden is filled with wide swaths of ornamental grasses and perennials such as black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia), goldenrod (Solidago) and sedum to name just a few. It is an anti-lawn movement that finds beauty in wide open expanses of prairie plantings rather than turf grass.
Ornamental Grasses looks at the professional life of Wolfgang Oehme - how he was influenced by Karl Foerster, his friendship with Kurl Bluemel and his collaborations with James van Sweden. All names any gardener interested in ornamental grasses and the New American style knows well.
Stefan Leppert tells Oehme’s story through the many public and private gardens he has designed. The book is full of breathtaking photos of these wonderful gardens that have indeed influenced so much of what we do as gardeners today. I found it so interesting to read how Oehme created the market for ornamental grasses because they were unavailable here in the US.
The book ends with a list of ‘Wolfi-Plants’. These are plants Oehme has used over and over in his designs. According to Leppert, Oehme looks for four qualities in a plant: stability, robustness, flowering duration and competitiveness. Based on those qualities, Oehme’s benchmark plant is Periscaria polymorpha.
If you’re thinking about turning an area of your lawn into a version of Oehme’s New American garden then you’ll want to check out Ornamental Grasses for inspiration (and the extensive plant list).
Note: This book was provided to me by the publisher, Frances Lincoln Limited, for the express purpose of reviewing it.
