Bulbs
Jacqueline van der Kloet “ sprinkling ” bulbs at the New York Botanical Garden . Photo by : Rob Cardillo . SEE MORE PHOTOS OF VAN DER KLOET ‘S GARDENS
It might be a stretchability to say that Dutch garden designer Jacqueline van der Kloet saved the tulip , but she has provide the ill-famed bulb with a much - involve second wind . Van der Kloet does n’t go the traditional route — which is to bombard onlookers with jumbo , monochromatic sweeps of a single cultivar , loud bursts of color that are gone in a few abbreviated weeks , with only limp foliation leave to show for it . or else , she harness the potential of tulip , and all spring bulbs , by integrate them into more realistic scene . “ It ’s the bulb ’s redemption , ” she says . “ People have to see the conjuring trick of bulbs . prominent blocks of tulips are majuscule for public space , but that might not work for the medium home . They need to see the theory . ”
employ bulbs as part of a larger composition bring forth painterly results , which makes perfect sense coming from a woman who dreamed of becoming an creative person . Van der Kloet completed her studies at the Institut Provincial Supérieur d’Horticulture in Brussels and spend six long time at a small Dutch house that design public gardens . She did n’t feel comfortable with their conventional approach to garden provision though , “ I thought it was too stolid , ” she remembers . “ I do n’t like a place with a berth of color here and a billet of color there . ”
Van der Kloet bend her focusing to residential garden and and limit up her headqurters in Weesp , a townspeople nigh to Amsterdam . There , she took a dissimilar approach in her case garden , which she call Theetuin , Dutch for Tea Garden — a reference to her program to dish up likely clients tea before engage them on a term of enlistment of her aesthetical .
In classically Dutch fashion , she laid out neat hedges of clipped box , privet , and beech . But within that framework , she blended perennial into ruggedly loose , impressionist blockage , throw Theetuin an ethereal timbre , as if a meadow had produce up between hedges . “ Everything is flowering through one another , ” she explain . “ There ’s always something in color . The Bible confetti comes to beware . ”
At van der Kloet ’s home , in Weesp , a spring palette of white , yellow , and green . exposure by : Philippe Perdereau . SEE MORE PHOTOS OF VAN DER KLOET ‘S GARDENS
Theetuin was where she test out combination of color , texture , habit , and bloom sentence . At first , she condense on mixing shrubs , roses , perennial , and grasses . But when the International Flower Bulb Centre reach her to compose an article about bulbs , she realized she knew very little about sure tulip . They beam her a jumbo consignment to try out , and when she find that many would come back year after yr — especially if she let the exhausted foliage buy the farm back course rather than clipping or braiding it — a erotic love affair was hold .
Longevity is a variety of sustainability , and that may be one rationality van der Kloet ’s designs have caught on . She ’s had commissions around the man , let in a ten - acre renovation of bed at Holland ’s Keukenhof , one of the largest public flower gardens in the world . The projects she ’s done in the United States have suffer with resounding success . She worked alongside her compatriot , garden interior designer Piet Oudolf , to comprise bulbs into New York City ’s Battery Park and Chicago ’s Millennium Park , followed by the New York Botanical Garden ’s Seasonal Walk . She also designed and a electric light walkway that included 116,000 lightbulb , all is shades of blue , at Martha Stewart ’s Bedford , New York , menage . The bulbs were administer by van der Kloet ’s signature tune “ sprinkling , ” which intend handful of bulbs are fondly tossed onto the ground , to be planted where they diminish .
What home gardener desire to sleep with , of course , is whether they can replicate such plantings in their own backyards . After all , Theetuin ’s testing ground operates in a different climate and with fewer of the lightbulb - munching rodents that plague so many American gardens .
A closing curtain - up of the bed at Keukenhof in bloom , in May . pic by : Jacqueline van der Kloet . SEE MORE PHOTOS OF VAN DER KLOET ‘S GARDENS
As prankish and whimsical as her garden can appear , van der Kloet is full of hard-nosed advice :
experience bulbs to ordinate with their recurrent buddy is a complex undertaking , one that require condition of timing , climate , height , and gloss . But van der Kloet is n’t only about spring . To her , it ’s hunky-dory if there ’s a brief lull now and then . “ The twine should not always be tense , ” she says . “ A garden want wearisome segments . ” But of course , the show is n’t over with outpouring , and the layering of subsequent blooms — alliums , then gladiolus , then lilies , then dahlias — continue through to the end of the growing time of year , only to bulge out again the next twelvemonth .
“ My plantings have regular recurrence , ” she says . “ There ’s lots of color , and that people of colour repeats itself . It ’s through balanced combination that flawlessness is reached . ”
