Planting Fields' New Oudolf Garden Opened in October Because Its Best Months Come After the Flowers

Who opens a new garden in the middle of October? Most gardens on the North Shore spend this month being cut back, raked and put to bed. Planting Fields Foundation picked October 17 to open the most significant addition to its Upper Brookville property since the Olmsted Brothers finished their work there in the 1930s. Piet Oudolf, the Dutch designer behind the High Line and The Battery in Manhattan, plans his gardens for the months after flowering as much as the weeks of bloom. His new acre at Planting Fields is built to stand, brown and full of seedheads, straight through the winter.

So the garden opened this week at the start of the stretch it was designed for. For anyone who lives a few minutes away, the coming months are when it has the most to show.

An Acre Planned for Seedheads and Bare Stems

The figures from the Foundation are big for a one-acre plot. The garden holds more than 25,000 plants and grasses drawn from more than 100 species, and it's Oudolf's first public garden in New York in over a decade. Oudolf leads the "New Perennial" movement, which picks perennials and grasses for their structure and seasonal changes as much as for their flower color.

He describes his own process this way, in a line the Foundation included in its July announcement:

"a complicated layering of seasonality, energy, endurance, and reward – both before, during, and after flowering."

Gina Wouters, the Foundation's president and CEO, told Newsday in January that the curators won't cut the seed heads in winter. Visitors will see the plants change across the whole year. In her words, Oudolf's approach means "thinking about the beauty of a garden and the value of a garden in four seasons, not just the one season when it's blooming." She described the plants as having a role in how the garden looks even as they die back, "allowing them to have multiple lives."

Oudolf's earlier gardens show what that looks like in practice. The High Line says his planting considers each plant's "full annual lifecycle" and "the beauty of their skeletal forms in winter." At Chicago's Lurie Garden, another Oudolf design, staff leave the perennials uncut through fall and winter, which keeps the browns in view and leaves seed for birds and cover for overwintering wildlife. Cutting back waits until late winter or early spring, before the first bulbs come up. Planting Fields hasn't published a cut-back calendar of its own. Its stated plan to leave the seed heads standing points the same way.

The Man Who Has Watched One of These Gardens Age

The person in charge of making it work is Peter Slothower, landscape curator for Planting Fields Foundation, who worked at Lurie Garden before coming to Long Island. Newsday's July visit found him turning Oudolf's hand-drawn plans into planting beds. The plans use a 10-by-10-foot grid with colored shapes and lettered abbreviations that mark where each plant goes.

"Part of his genius is that he looks at this plan and he can envision what all of these plants are going to look like at any point in the season and through the years as they develop," Slothower told the paper.

"Through the years" is worth keeping in mind on a first visit. Beds went in through the summer. Planting started in June, and by July 21 the Foundation reported 21,000 plants in the ground with 4,000 more to come. What opened on October 17 is a garden in its first fall. Anyone who visits now, again in January and again next summer will see it fill in over time.

What to Look For on a Late-Fall Walk

The garden's layout invites a slow walk. When Oudolf visited in the spring, he made a series of changes to the ground itself. The garden now slopes on purpose, so one side is hidden from the other, and Slothower told Newsday the paths "reward further exploration."

A few things to find:

• The meadow matrices. The meadow sections are anchored by prairie dropseed, Sporobolus heterolepis.
• The summer stars, now going to seed. The July update named threadleaf bluestar, pale purple coneflower 'Hula Dancer', purple lovegrass, yarrow 'Moonshine', calamint and ornamental onion 'Summer Beauty' as highlights. Late fall shows what Oudolf picked each of them to become after flowering.
• The Rose Arbor at the center. Landscape designer James Greenleaf built the arbor for the Byrne family around 1906. The Coe family kept it after buying Planting Fields in 1913, and Oudolf's plan puts it at the middle of the acre. The Foundation's restoration plan calls for 31 new custom-designed arbors and more planting for seasonal interest.
• The tree bed at the west end. Oudolf chose 15 trees and shrubs for this bed. The Oudolf Garden team picked them out at nurseries in New York and New Jersey. They include a three-flowered maple, a river birch and two dogwoods.

The garden has strong public backing. About 200 people helped build it, according to Newsday, and New York State announced a $1 million Environmental Protection Fund investment in August for the historic gardens and grounds at Planting Fields, including the Oudolf Garden. Wouters has called it "Long Island's most beautiful acre."

The Quiet Season Comes With Easier Parking

Planting Fields sits within the Village of Upper Brookville, although its mailing address is 1395 Planting Fields Road, Oyster Bay. For neighbors, the practical side of the off-season works in their favor.

Parking is $8 per car. After Labor Day, the fee is collected only on weekends and holidays, and the collection season ends in mid-November. New York State Parks lists November 15 and the Foundation lists November 16. Under the Foundation's posted schedule, collection doesn't start again until weekends in April. Seniors 62 and older park free on weekdays, and the pay stations accept a swiped driver's license as proof of age. The Foundation's visitor pages list no separate ticket or timed entry for the Oudolf Garden.

The Foundation lists park hours as 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, closed December 25. The State Parks page gives an earlier closing time of 4:30 p.m., so on a short winter afternoon it makes sense to plan for the earlier one. Both the Main Greenhouse and the Camellia Greenhouse are open Wednesday through Monday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and they're free with no reservation needed. A cold-weather loop can take in the brown and gold of the Oudolf acre and then the warm greenhouses.

Reasons to Come Back Before Spring

The Oudolf Garden opened alongside a second new outdoor work. Fiona Tan's Fragment of the Foundations for a Babel Tower, a maze-like installation on the East Lawn, is the seventh Catalyst commission. It also opened October 17 and is scheduled to stay up through fall 2027. That gives it about a year to be seen against the garden as it changes.

The calendar between now and the new year offers plenty of chances to check on the garden:

The Gold Coast Garden Tour is the only program on the calendar right now that stops at the Oudolf Garden, and it ends October 31. After that, visitors see the garden on their own. Early-bird pricing for the holiday house tours and Home for the Holidays runs through November 1, so families planning December visits can save by booking before that date. Each of those December trips passes an acre that, if the Foundation keeps to its plan, will still have its seedheads standing.

I've spent my life in greater Roslyn, and places like Planting Fields are part of why the Gold Coast feels like home. If you'd like a few more favorite cold-weather walks near Upper Brookville, or just want to talk about this corner of the North Shore, I'd be glad to hear from you. Gwen Levy | Let's Connect.