Seasonal Walk: Home

The Seasonal Walk, a year-round garden nestled against the north end of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, gradually evolves through the seasons with an ever-changing palette of color, form, and texture. Designed by noted Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, the garden features an eclectic array of perennials, grasses, and bulbs chosen with an emphasis on plant structure and textural contrasts. The garden’s two long beds flank a stone path leading to an arbor and terrace, and from spring through the fall these beds form a spectacular corridor for weddings and other special occasions.

The Walk was traditionally planted each spring with a massive, colorful display of tulips, which was replaced a few months later with a dramatic arrangement of summer tropicals. In 2011 NYBG asked Oudolf to design the beds as a summer border meant to last just one season. His design was so successful that the Garden commissioned him to create a permanent planting there in 2014. Oudolf’s mission statement: to create a garden that is gorgeous from April through October, but that’s also alive and interesting from late fall to early spring, and that is ever-changing and evolving.

The Walk presented a few design challenges for Oudolf. The two beds are long and narrow, but one is narrower and shorter than the other, and receives both less sunlight and rainfall because of its setting. Oudolf’s goal was to select plants that were not used elsewhere on NYBG’s grounds, limiting his choices to some degree. He worked closely with Marjorie Rosen, the NYBG board member who funded the installation and ongoing maintenance of the Walk, and Kristin Schleiter, NYBG Associate Vice President for Outdoor Gardens & Senior Curator, who both provided input as Oudolf formulated the design. His assumption was that the plantings would change somewhat over time. “We let the garden tell us what’s working and what’s not,” Schleiter says.

Oudolf is deeply inspired by natural areas where wild perennials, grasses, and bulbs intermingle, and while the Seasonal Walk’s plantings don’t pretend to be “nature,” says Schleiter, the design calls heavily on it as a model. Oudolf often relies on drifts of grasses to anchor his designs. Here, though, he used a planting scheme based on islands and threads of perennials woven with a few grasses and bulbs. No variety is used just once; instead plants are repeated and grouped for striking juxtapositions. This creates both a feeling of order and calm, and, paradoxically, a sense of movement and action. A simple, neatly clipped yew hedge serves as a contrasting backdrop—the exuberance of the borders works best against the orderly screen behind them.

Among the more striking plants that Oudolf repeats here for a dynamic effect is moor grass, (Molinia litoralis 'Transparent'), whose silvery purple stems and leaves create a kind of floaty foam throughout the border. Goats beard (Aruncus ‘Horatio’) produces tiny creamy-white flowers on astilbe-like panicles borne on bronze-hued stems; as the flowers fade the panicles turn brown, then the fern-like foliage turns red in fall. Hervey’s aster (Eurybia x herveyi), a cross between two native aster species, holds lavender-rayed blooms with yellow buttony centers through summer, and has a structure that endures through fall and winter. Three varieties of meadow rue (Thalictrum) bloom in succession for three solid months, with big ethereal, soft masses. The tallest variety, Thalictrum x ‘Elin’, holds clouds of delicate lavender flowers floating atop lobed foliage on eight-foot stems.

One of the unique aspects of the Walk is that every two to three weeks it morphs into a different garden. Below are some of the highlights throughout the seasons.

Spring: Just before the bulbs emerge in early spring the Seasonal Walk is cut down to the ground—the only time the garden is bare during the year. To signal the advent of the new year Oudolf chose an exquisite mix of early spring bulb cultivars including glory-of-snow (Chionodoxa ‘Pink Giant’), grape-hyacinth (Muscari ‘Valerie Finnis’), dwarf reticulated iris (Iris ‘Harmony’), and a white variety of Siberian squill (Scilla ‘Alba’). Masses of daffodils (Narcissus) follow. Oudolf eschewed yellow varieties, focusing instead on gorgeous white or white with pink-centered cultivars including ‘Thalia’, ‘Pink Charm’, and ‘Segovia’. He also favored white and pink tulip (Tulipa) cultivars such as ‘Marilyn’, ‘Lady Jane’, and ‘Little Princess’. As these blooms fade, columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), which is woven throughout the border, rises above the emerging foliage around it.

Summer: With warmer weather, the Walk’s color palette shifts from whites and pinks to bolder jewel tones. Salvia ‘Twilight Serenade’ appears with spikes of glowing, purple-blue flowers in early summer. Calamint (Nepeta ‘Joanna Reed’) creates a soft haze of purple-blue from late spring through fall. The garnet, egg-shaped flowers of drumstick ornamental onion (Allium sphaerocephalon) nod in the breeze. Bees swarm to the soft but spiky spheres of globe thistle (Echinops bannaticus 'Blue Glow'), which blooms from mid-July through mid-August. Silvery green mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) is another pollinator magnet, and is typically smothered with bees, wasps, and butterflies. The Japanese anemone hybrid Anemone x ‘Wild Swan’ produces a profusion of white flowers backed in violet-blue. Oudolf uses coneflower (Echinacea) as a major structural component in the garden, and included his own striking cultivars, the white-petaled ‘Virgin’, and magenta ‘Fatal Attraction’. Wonderful plant combinations include the deep pink fluffy blooms and large palmate leaves of Queen-of-the-prairie (Filipendula rubra) next to the fuzzy purple buttons of ironweed (Vernonia), and the golden ray flowers black-eye Susan (Rudbeckia ‘Henry Isler’). Burnet’s (Sanguisorba) deep pink, bottle brush-like flowers nod on wiry stems next to masses of steely blue globe thistle.

Fall: By mid-autumn, the Walk is riotous with fiery golds, purples, and reds blazing beside softer lavenders and browns. The glowing golden daisies of Rudbeckia subtomentosa ‘Henry Eilers’ rise above the surrounding plants on six-to-eight foot stems. The statuesque bugbane variety Actaea ‘Queen of Sheba’ bears gracefully pendant, white, fragrant spires. Dahlia cultivars ‘Midnight Dancer’ and ‘Nicholas’ light up the beds with fuschia-purple and apricot tones. Exotic purple-spotted blossoms of toad lily (Tricyrtis formosana 'Dark Beauty') appear in late fall just as the foliage of nearby bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii) shifts from green to russet.

Winter: Oudolf’s approach is to leave plants in place as long as they remain visually effective, and most of the plants in the Walk are not deadheaded—their striking skeletons and seed heads are left to overwinter, so the Walk remains fascinating through the winter months with evocative silhouettes rising from a blanket of snow. The strength of the plants’ architecture, and of the Seasonal Walk’s design, is revealed when the flowers have faded away, but movement and texture are still at play.

by Beth Hanson