When Dr. Deborah Chud wanted to landscape her new home, she imagined just what she wanted it to look like. But after many months and too much money, the result was nothing near what she had envisioned. Then she discovered the work of Piet Oudolf, the brilliant Dutch landscape designer who placed equal importance on both structure and color.

Gardeners and designers have always looked longingly at Oudolf’s gardens when leafing through his many beautifully-illustrated books, but Deborah Chud wanted something more. In what turned into a five-year journey, she studied Oudolf’s designs and developed an unprecedented understanding of why Oudolf’s gardens are so magical. She also created the world’s most comprehensive database of his plant combinations. In this presentation, we’ll learn Chud’s personal story: how she started as a non-gardener and created her current garden (see above), along with a monster database and a new career. She’ll also describe the historical context of Oudolf’s work. Finally, she’ll introduce his basic design principles of structure, coherence, and contrast.

This program has been generously funded by the Friends of the Edgartown Free Public Library.