Indigenous Garden Design: The wildflower meadow

Some years ago, I was shopping for my partners birthday present at Readings bookshop when I stumbled across Landscapes in Landscapes, one of many books written about the gardens of Piet Oudolf. Within 5 minutes I had purchased it…. What a wonderful present I had found. Little did I know that the book would end up spending much more time in my hands that hers and end up a foundational book in my collection.

Piet’s work was beautiful, but how could it be applied meaningfully to the Australian context?

I spent some time looking through his design work in an attempt to uncover what he was doing. I looked specifically at his plant species and the method behind how he ordered his designs.

What was his recipe and how it could translate to Melbourne?

That was some years ago. It wasn’t until recently when I was thinking deeply about the small Indigenous plants of Melbourne that I saw the opportunity to translate Piet’s work into the Australian context.

When you understand Melbourne’s pre 1750’s landscapes you see that much of area that is now Melbourne was once a wildflower rich open grassland, with a canopy cover of between 10-30%. In this environment, understory grasses, plants and shrubs thrived.

In today’s context we are blessed with a huge range of small, Indigenous plants that fit perfectly into a Piet inspired garden design. Plants which demonstrate the full extent of the Australian climate by drying out over summer and assuming an almost ‘dead’ aesthetic, before blazing back to life in Autumn. A quality that I feel would capture Piet’s interest.

Designing an Indigenous wildflower meadow

In Landscapes in Landscapes, Piet provides colour pallets next to the photos of his gardens. I find these colour pallets almost distracting. As a design explanation, I feel they do not even begin to explain how his work operates, or how he thinks while he works. If an analogy to his work had to be drawn, it would be to ballet such as Swan Lake. Paintings offer us little in the way of understanding the dynamic relationships at play in Piet’s gardens.

To explain what we see we need to look at what Piet’s work is doing with texture, lifecycles, seasonality and plays of light. Piet appears to pay particular attention to seed head displays, the transition from flower to seed head and the plays of light that are produced. I imagine he considers in detail how these relationships will vary as the plant moves through the season.

From a Melbourne Indigenous perspective, I imagine Piet would love so many of our indigenous plants for their seasonal transitions. From Austrostipa elegantissima’s amazing haze of seed heads to Dianella amoena’s transition from dainty blue flower to purple berry to brown wiry canes. Piet’s gardens are in a constant state of motion and he puts his audiences into spaces where they can see the seasons unfolding before them. Our local plants do a great job of exemplifying our seasonal variety.

Indigenous meadow design inspired by Piet Oudolf

In the following design, I have taken these observations of Piet’s work and designed a wildflower meadow using the Indigenous plants of Melbourne. Spatially the design I am overlaying is very simple. I am imagining green pathways moving through a wildflower meadow dotted with a few shrubby outcrops.

In creating this design, I have followed Piet’s lead and applied my plants in groups. In making the adaption to using Indigenous plants, I have included 3 species in each group: one grass, one upright herb and one inter-tussock spreader. I did this to increase the density of the vegetation groups. Piet’s gardens never include views of exposed soil or unfilled space and I think grouping together a variety of plant habits will help us avoid this.

Piet seems to preference solid forms with his vegetation blocks with light fluffy edges. Given the inherent qualities of many of Melbourne’s Indigenous plants, I foresee no problems achieving the fluffy edges. Achieving the density is where the challenge in this design lays, and to create this effect our Indigenous plants we will need to be densely planted. To survive in this densely planted groupings, we will need to provide full sun and deep, loamy free draining soils. Although indigenous plants can handle a variety of conditions, to achieve the results we are aiming for we need to provide conditions favorable to rapid plant growth.   

Indigenous Meadow Design Specifics

For the green pathways, I have created two mixes using low growing plants that can tolerate being cut back and some foot traffic. Typical plants in these groups might include Microlaena stipoides, Dichondria repens and kennadia prostrata.

The herb and wildflower rich grassland mixes could be put together is various ways depending upon the relationships you are trying to create at different times in the year. In putting my mixes together, I have considered foliage textures, flower/seed head plays of light, plant densities, habit and lifecycles. An example of a low growing mix I might use may be Austrostipa scapra, Wahlenbergia stricta and Caesia calliantha.

When choosing Shrubs, I would choose species that contrast against the grassland and which add interest at the times of year when the grassland has turned golden yellow. I would look at  foliage and stem colour. Examples of plants I may choose include Indigofera australis and Senna artemisioides. For something larger and more open I may look at Bursaria spinosa for its beautiful, copper brown seed heads.

Indigenous Design: The wildflower meadow

At this point in time, I have not yet met anyone that has expressed interested in attempting to do what I have discussed above with their garden space. As a Landscape Architect, I am constantly confronted with so many competing interests that by the time I get to the planting design the spaces allocated for garden beds are little more than moments of what could have been. This is the reality of city living that most of us know.

If this is not your case, and you are someone with a love of Indigenous plants that has open garden space to spare and a desire to create a Piet Oudolf inspired wildflower meadow I would love to hear from you

Ben

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