Not wanting to take over his parents' business, Piet set his sights further afield, and spent two years travelling the world. Upon returning to The Netherlands, he started working for a landscape contractor, where his interest in gardening blossomed. He went back to school  for 5 years to get his degree in landscaping and garden design and subsequently moved to his present site in the east of The Netherlands to start his own business, designing private gardens.

Taking inspiration from gardens he had seen in England, Piet started to develop his distinctive style, but soon found that the plants he needed to complete his designs simply weren’t available. The only solution was to breed his own, using a combination of locally available varieties and those that Piet travelled extensively to find.

Piet pictured here at his own garden, a fitting showcase for his work.

All this breeding and propagating work occasionally resulted in a surplus of plants, which his wife, Anja, started to sell to local gardeners.

However, Piet’s interest in seeking out new plants to add to his gene pool was an expensive hobby. The income from designing a few local gardens and selling surplus stock on the side didn’t really provide sufficient funding. Fortunately for both Piet and the rest of the gardening world, a string of events led to him meeting with Future Plants' founder, Aad Zoet, and Piet subsequently began to receive additional income from royalty payments for commercially produced quantities of his own varieties.

As the business arrangement with Aad Zoet progressed, Aad had another idea to expose Piet’s work to both the trade and the public. He arranged for Piet Oudolf to design the garden outside a major botanical photography library, where both his plants and his designs would be used in photographic compositions and seen by industry bosses doing business at the library.

The 'Evolution' garden at Floriade 2002 typifies Piet's distinctive style.

Up until now, Piet Oudolf had only been designing private gardens in the area surrounding his base in Hummelo, so this large project was a big step. However, he was more than up to the challenge, the garden was a great success and was soon followed with other commercial projects such as the ABN Amro bank headquarters in Amsterdam.

Piet Oudolf showing Queen Elizabeth II his winning garden at Chelsea in 2000.

International interest in Piet’s garden designs wasn’t far behind. Following his landmark gold medal and Best in Show at London’s Chelsea Flower Show in 2000, he was invited to design the Millennium Garden in Chicago, where he worked together with an American designer. His work at the Dutch Floriade exhibition in 2002 attracted the attention of those responsible for the September 11 memorial garden in Battery Park, New York City, and this is his latest project to date.