Planting Fields Arboretum ready for its year-round garden

Peter Slothower tipped his wide-brimmed gardening hat and pointed toward a plot of alliums at Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay. The purple bulbous perennials, bursting with color, comprise a nearly completed garden arrangement nestled in the heart of the lush property. 

The plants' particular placement is reflective of detailed, hand-drawn plans laid by the garden’s visionary, Piet Oudolf, the landscape architect who designed the High Line and The Battery in Manhattan. To bring his intention to life, Slothower, the landscape curator for Planting Fields Foundation, which is making the garden, needs to translate the Dutch artist’s work and schematics into a garden where visitors stroll and bees buzz around for food. 

The 1-acre space is designed to change like a living organism each season, with different sections of the garden blooming and receding in coordination. It's set to open on Oct. 17.

The work is almost done.

“I’m doing my best to imagine what Piet sees,” Slothower said during a walk-through of the garden. “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, along with staff, consultants and volunteers, have dug holes and meticulously bedded more than 20,000 plants for the new garden. About 200 people have helped in its creation, which is the most significant addition to the 409-acre Planting Fields property in nearly a century, the foundation said.

From plans to plants

Holding pages of garden plans, Slothower showed how Oudolf's ideas move from paper to the soil. 

The schematics use a 10-foot-by-10-foot grid to lay out the plants in individual sections of the garden. Oudolf then draws colored shapes and makes lettered abbreviations showing where each plant goes. The plans serve as a vibrant, and complex, road map for the garden. 

Slothower previously worked in Lurie Garden in Chicago, one of Oudolf’s other creations. It has given him a bank of experience to draw from while overseeing the first Oudolf garden on Long Island. 

“Translating from this to that, using those grid lines to figure it out, and then you edit slightly and move things around as needed,” Slothower said while flipping through the portfolio of plans. 

It’s an iterative process. Slothower may learn a plot simply looks too bulky based on the plans, so he’ll text, email or FaceTime Oudolf for input.

Oudolf visited the garden last spring and made a flurry of changes to the topography, said Gina Wouters, president and CEO of Planting Fields Foundation. The garden has a deliberate sloping structure that blocks one side of the garden from the other. It's emblematic of the detail that goes into building a space aimed at immersing nature-goers in a new experience. 

The garden's pathways “reward further exploration,” Slothower said.

Hands in the dirt 

The plot where the garden is taking shape is unrecognizable from its appearance mere months ago. Cardboard was placed over the land to help kill weeds; some trees were removed.

The work accelerated when the first shipment of plants arrived in late April, Wouters said.

The foundation built a makeshift nursery to store them. Wouters acknowledged “a small window of time to plant everything." It prompted “a big, big push to find all the hands to plant this," she said.

Marty Feinstein, a volunteer, was moving mulch Tuesday morning from one part of the garden to planting beds using a golf cart. He marveled at the transformation.

“It’s like my garden,” Feinstein said. “I’ve been a part of it.”

Nearby, high school volunteers pressed a shovel into the grounds. They're part of the revolving door of helpers, staff and consultants tasked with making the garden concept a practical space.

Slothower said the space “is very much a public garden.”

“It is made by the people, for the people,” he said.

By Joseph Ostapiuk

joseph.ostapiuk@newsday.com@OstapiukJ