Piet Oudolf Vlinderhof Garden

Join master plantsman and landscape designer Piet Oudolf and horticulturalist Dr Noel Kingsbury on a tour of Vlinderhof Garden (designed by Piet Oudolf).

In this short course you'll learn Piet's key planting design principles and investigate how Piet Oudolf's planting design appears to break a fundamental rule of design – 'less is more'. We'll try to crack this conundrum together.

The course was filmed in this Dutch garden just at the end of summer - just as summer's flowering tips over to autumnal colour and winter seed heads, which will help us to understand how Piet's plant selection works in garden designs throughout the seasons.

Alongside you'll understand how the planting schemes can be applied on a large or a small scale (from huge public gardens to your own garden) and learn how to appreciate the consistently natural look and feel of the plant varieties Piet has chosen.

We'll also look at how the artistic principle of tonal depth in your planting design and how to achieve this in your garden using light and dark.

The Vlinderhof Garden includes over 100 plants, and we'll look at how Piet pulls together this number of plant varieties. We'll also see how the plants are used for three themes throughout the garden - Key Plants, Companion Plants and Surprises.

You'll understand how to choose Key Plants for their long season of good structure and these plants are repeated creating a strong sense of rhythm and visual unity throughout the garden design.

You'll be guided through the garden plant to see how other plant varieties are added for additional impact, even in small numbers, to keep up interest and create surprises.

Plus this course includes an overview of the founding of the Vlinderhof Garden and essential maintenance tasks performed throughout the seasons by the garden's volunteers.

You'll learn:

How to apply planting design principles on small or large scale gardens

Choosing plants for seasonal structure

Creating planting surprises

Garden maintenance tasks

Time to complete this planting design course:

Every student is different but in general we think the whole course will take around 4 hours to complete including:

Video lesson: 40 minutes

Course notes: 50 minutes

Assignment: at least 2 hours

Interactive classroom time: 15 minutes

Tutor feedback review (Expert level): 15 minutes

You'll need:

You don't need any special equipment, but you will be creating your own plant list and garden design.

The course is suitable for all levels - beginners to garden designers or horticulture professionals who want to learn from a master plantsman.

The course includes:

1 on-demand video lesson - presented by Piet Oudolf and Dr Noel Kingsbury

lifetime access to the video, notes and interactive class

flexible classes - join and learn when and where you like

downloadable lesson notes

practical (optional) planting project

access on your mobile, PC, Mac or laptop

small interactive online classroom chat online to students from around the world

Continued Professional Development (CPD) accredited for 4 hours (Expert version)

Ready to get started?

Just add the course to your basket above - choose the 'Expert' option for personal feedback from Noel on your Piet Oudolf inspired garden design and questions.

Any questions? Contact us by clicking on the orange speech symbol - we'd love to hear from you.