Ulf Nordfjell’s Garden Designs Shown at NYBG Winter Lecture Series

Posted in Adult Education, People on March 9 2016, by Joyce Newman

In his captivating slideshow for the Annual NYBG Winter Lecture Series, Chelsea Gold, Ulf Nordfjell’s gardens designed for the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show look completely contemporary with impressively modern, clean lines and simple, architectural forms.

Nordfjell, who is a trained botanist, ceramicist, and landscape architect, is known for his use of natural Swedish granite, steel, and timber to build the structures in his gardens. But there’s another key element in his designs: old-fashioned romance.

The son of a forester and a gardening mother, Nordfjell was raised in northern Sweden and is now based in Stockholm. He has a deep commitment to ecology and the environment, often using native Swedish grasses and flowers in his designs.  No matter what country he is working in, one of Nordfjell’s guiding ecological principles is “the right plant for the right place.” His trend-setting gardens live up to this rule. But at the same time, he loves to choose plants that are surprisingly romantic.

Case in point: Nordfjell’s “best-in-show” Laurent-Perrier Garden designed for the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show, which was inspired by the romance of the Loire Valley and gardens in the south of France, as well as by traditional English gardens. The composition of this garden, its trees, and shrubs echo the French style of landscaping with simple, repeating forms and pruned, soft shapes, like the terrain in the Champagne region.

But his selection of perennial plants is based on Nordfjell’s desire to create a kind of conversation piece. “English gardens use a blend of varieties you can’t see anywhere else,” he explains. “They often use them to create something stunning and unique and I like to try those combinations.”

Many of Nordfjell’s romantic plant choices can be found at the English gardening website of Crocus, the nursery and landscaping company that actually worked with him to create the Laurent-Perrier garden. Crocus offers detailed plant lists and designs of his flower borders here.

Nordfjell’s color palette for the Laurent-Perrier garden includes soft pinks and blues, as well as creamy oranges, yellows, and whites. For full sun areas, he uses five different Iris varieties, three different blue Viola, plus Dianthus, Stipa, and Verbascum. In shadier areas, he chose Thalictrum, Gillenia, Aruncus, and Anemones.

For Nordfjell, trees and shrubs provide structure and geometry in the garden. Cypress Oak (Quercus fastigiata ‘Koster’) forms a backdrop in a traditional espalier style, as well as the pruned, pointed spires. Shrubs include geometrically shaped Yews (Taxus baccata), cloud-like Enkiathus perulatus, and lavender that is sometimes pruned and other times left unclipped. Soft, leafy honey-locust trees (Gleditsia) punctuate the spaces and create contrast with other more solid forms.

A water feature that feels like it could belong in the south of France is definitely Swedish and modern in its overall effect because it is surrounded by copper and travertine.

A gorgeous bronze statue of Orpheus, the musician in Greek Mythology, sculpted by the contemporary Swedish artist Carl Milles, takes the viewer back to an ancient Mediterranean symbol. The sculpture was borrowed for the exhibition from the Millesgården Museum in Stockholm.

Not surprisingly, when asked about his favorite “romantic gardens” from the past, Nordfjell mentions Villa Gamberaia in Florence, which is a formal Renaissance garden, and the famous Sissinghurst and Hidcote gardens in England, both of which epitomize English gardens of romance.

The 16th Annual Winter Lecture Series: Chelsea Gold will continue on Thursday, March 24; 10–11:30 a.m. in Ross Hall. It will feature designer Luciano Giubbilei.

Register here.