A year in a garden in the Netherlands

Jacqueline van der Kloet has designed bulb gardens around the world; among them Keukenhof and Floriade as well as the spring bulb display at the Lurie Garden in Chicago where she worked with fellow Dutch-designer, Piet Oudolf. She was in Madison in 2017 for the Allen Centennial Gardens Symposium where she thrilled the audience, including me, with her knowledge and inspirational use of bulbs in garden design. If you missed that event, then you'll want to pick up Van der Kloet's latest book, "A Year in my Garden."

As the title says, this is Van der Kloet's own garden in the Netherlands where she experiments with bulbs and perennials. It is full of great bulb combinations, but is also valuable because we can see what plants she uses to hide dying bulb foliage. Though she's known for her Tulip mixes, the book looks at a wide variety of bulbs considering flower size, color and season.

The book is arranged month by month making it easy to see what she focuses on at different seasons. Though we garden in a different zone with different weather conditions, much of what Van der Kloet does in her garden is possible to do in ours as well, with the exception of some of the outdoor winter chores. 

Though the book is arranged by month, it is noteworthy that Van der Kloet begins with September. She does so, she says, because it's the month when we start to say goodbye to summer and start planning and planting for spring. She says it is also the month where we can most clearly see the garden as a continuous process. I've always thought of September as the beginning of the year because that's when the school year starts, so I felt she reinforced my own feelings on the subject. 

The book is an attractive size and shape (9 3/4" x 11") that's easy to hold with matte rather than glossy paper and easily readable type. The color reproduction is excellent with images depicting plants that look true to their natural color, rather than digitally souped up. There's even a nice red ribbon to mark your place. 

Each month van der Kloet lists her favorite plants grouped by color or type, like grasses. She gives advice on how she blends her bulbs with specific suggestions on how to succeed with Tulips — which even she admits are not the easiest bulbs to grow. She talks about pruning woody plants, even lists her favorite tools and trees for small gardens. It's a very thorough look at one woman's garden. 

Jacqueline van der Kloet planting bulbs with Piet Oudolf.

Though I am generally happy with the book, there are some things that I found frustrating. I bought the English edition of the book which just came out, but I realized "English" is the operative term; all the temperatures are given in Celsius and the measurements in metric!

After reading the entire text, I noted that Van der Kloet talked about aggressive or invasive plants that she unknowingly added to her garden and has spent years fighting. Yet she included a number of these same plants in her favorite lists with a much less critical description; a less observant reader might easily add these same problem plants. 

The book is filled with beautiful garden images except for the double-page spreads of 12 pictures that showed the garden from one point of view each month. Most months, I found it difficult to see the changes from picture to picture over the year. For all the pages devoted to this concept, I would much rather have seen more full and double page pictures of the garden. A good idea that did not quite work from this gardener's point of view. That said, these critiques are not enough to make me regret my purchase and I certainly recommend it to those of you who love bulbs. 

Comments

[Lisa at Greenbow]

Sounds like a good one.

[Barbara H.]

Very important words to find in a review these days: "easily readable type". Oh for those younger days when such words did not have such a positive ring to them. Thank you for noticing the disparity of talking about how hard it is to get rid of stubbornly invasive plants and yet finding them in the plant list. I get appalled sometimes when reading a plant list from a reputable gardener and find things included that are clearly trouble making plants. I love bulbs but don't enjoy planting them, so seeing them in a book might satisfy that need for seeing them.

[Kris P]

How I wish I could design with so many of the bulbs that grace Dutch gardens! I'm afraid this book would make me woefully jealous. Other than some Dutch Iris and daffodils, I mainly stick to South African/Mediterranean bulbs.

[Loree / danger garden]

I am not a fan of bulbs (their dying foliage, the fact I almost always put a shovel through them when they're dormant) but I am glad that other people are, that way I can appreciate the flowers in their gardens.