Ulsan's Taehwa River gets a garden by Oudolf, Hoes

Diplomacy

Published: 27 Oct. 2022, 18:33 Updated: 27 Oct. 2022, 20:33

Ulsan's Taehwa River gets a garden by Oudolf, Hoes

From left, Bart Hoes, Cassian Schmidt, Laura Fernald Ekasetya and Piet Oudolf at the Osulloc tea house in the Bukchon area of Jongno District, central Seoul, on Monday. [PARK SANG-MOON]

The first Piet Oudolf garden in Asia will start blooming next spring by the Taehwa River in Ulsan.

“I thought it was a unique setting for a garden,” Oudolf told the Korea JoongAng Daily at an Osulloc tea house in Seoul on Monday. Accompanying him were fellow garden designers and horticulturalists Bart Hoes, Laura Fernald Ekasetya and Cassian Schmidt.

Hoes is the co-designer of the garden, who recognized the garden’s potential first.

“I was approached by some gardeners in Korea about this national garden by the river in Ulsan in October 2019,” Hoes said. “The whole location of the park, the historical bamboo forest, and the river behind it – I thought it was really beautiful and interesting, so I talked to Piet.”

Oudolf, pioneer of a “new perennial movement” in garden design that incorporates plants that die and bloom back seasonally, is the Dutch mastermind behind the High Line and Battery in New York, the Lurie in Chicago, the Hauser & Wirth in the U.K., and of course, where it all began, the Hummelo in the Netherlands.

The Taehwagang National Garden welcomed Hoes, Oudolf, and a crew of garden and landscape architects to work on designing a nearly 200,000-square-foot garden from late 2019.

A view of the Taehwagang National Garden in Ulsan [ULSAN METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT]

Because Hoes and Oudolf took into consideration not just the colors of the plants and flowers but also their different growing speeds, blooming times, heights and textures, meticulous planning and experimenting took a few months. After pandemic-related logistical delays were cleared, the crew was finally able to plant earlier this year.

The garden, named the Hoes-Oudolf Ulsan Garden and more causally referred to as the Garden of Five Seasons, opened to the public this month.

Visitors will see a different face per season, starting with just the wee tops of grasses and flowering plants showing above the ground today.
“Year after year, you can expect an extra dimension added to the layers of the garden,” said Hoes.

“In the spring, we will be looking for new trees to work on the woodlands space,” said Oudolf.

Visitors will see full blooming in action around May 2023, with some of the Oudolfs’ favorite plants such as Allium “Summer Beauty” or Aster “Little Carlow,” which will bloom in harmony with some native species of Korea such as Aster koraiensis, Korean angelica and Patrinia rupestris.

“[The team] also had to think and plan how the design might fit with the Korean sense of gardens, how you keep your gardens here,” said Schmidt. “Our impression was that Koreans have a really good eye for details. I think the garden would meet your expectations.”

The garden will continue to be updated seasonally for the next five years at the least, and how exactly it turns out will be up to the plants and their adjustment to the climate and other factors.

“It’s almost like sending them out on an expedition,” said Oudolf.

A design of the Hoes-Oudolf Ulsan Garden in the Taehwagang National Garden [HOES-OUDOLF LANDSCAPE DESIGN]

Because the Five Seasons Garden will be part of the national garden by the Taehwa river, its maintenance will largely depend on local volunteers, as has been the case for other public gardens designed by Oudolf like the Lurie Garden in Chicago or the Oudolf Garden Detroit.

“We are working in teams with Korean gardeners and volunteers,” said Hoes. “So many of them are passionate about gardening, it’s been quite lovely to work with them.”

“Volunteers are the stewards of the garden,” said Oudolf. “People might think that once a garden is ready, that’s it. But they need to be taken care of. In return, you’ll see all the aspects of a plant’s life, you will see them coming out of the ground, see the energy they provide, you will see them flower, and you’ll see them go back to dormancy. You’ll see that each has a different personality, just like people.”

Although Oudolf is celebrated in the world of garden designers and aficionados, with thousands having flocked to his and his wife Anja’s private garden at Hummelo for nearly 40 years until it closed at the end of October of 2018, the man himself doesn’t appear to have accepted his fame.

“He knows more about how this project started,” Oudolf says, pointing to Hoes when asked about how he took on the project in Korea.

Asked more about how they came to choose the species for their garden in Ulsan, Oudolf is quick to defer to Schmidt.

“He introduced me to many plants from all over the world, from Kyrgyzstan to North America,” he says. “He’s much better in understanding plants in their own habitats. I’m just a designer, fascinated with plants.”

The garden in Korea might be one of Oudolf’s last public projects.

“I really have to pick my projects now, I’m getting old,” Oudolf said when asked about taking on more projects in Asia. “I realized during the pandemic that I have been so busy in recent years. I’d like to be involved in a different way if that’s possible.”

Ekasetya, who has for years managed the Lurie Garden in Chicago, is not worried about the future of perennial gardening.

“He’s inspired a new generation of designers, many of whom we’ve seen in the gardeners we’ve met in Korea,” she said.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]