Designing a Winter Garden

I have always cut my echinacea down to the ground in the fall but now I see the beauty of leaving them untouched for the winter.

Piet Oudolf on Designing a Winter Garden Gardens in winter are typically deemed dormant, but Piet Oudolf believes that they shouldn’t be. Mr. Oudolf, who is Dutch, is the leading exemplar of the new Perennials Landscape Movement, which holds that plants should be chosen for shape and texture more than for color. See his SlideShow via NYTimes

One of Mr. Oudolf’s ideas is that a garden should be designed to have a life throughout the year, not just in the spring and summer. “The garden in winter is an emotional experience,” he said. “You think in terms of decay and disappearing and coming back. You feel the life cycle of nature."

"If you make a four-season garden you have to learn to accept decay and see the beauty of it. It’s about the texture and shape, the seed heads and the skeletons. So instead of using the scissors you use your eyes," said Mr. Oudolf.