TRACEY FAHY

Gardens (UK)

Piet Oudolf at RHS Hampton Court

Internationally acclaimed Dutch landscape designer, author and plantsman Piet Oudolf created a wild-looking meadow-style garden at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2018 and earned himself the inaugural RHS Horticultural Hero award. I had the great honour of helping to plant up this garden.

The design featured dominant matrix planting of Stipa barbata, better known as feather grass. The perennial grass bears rolled, linear leaves and even produces small clusters of flowers from early summer, followed by silver seed awns. As well as feather grass, Piet’s star plants included Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’, which features dark-centred, copper-red flower heads, Allium ‘Millennium’ with its round heads of purple star-shaped flowers and Astilbe chinensis ‘Visions in Pink’, noted for its pale-pink flower plumes.