"You look at this landscape, and it goes deeper than what you see...It reminds you of something in the genes...NATURE, or the longing for nature.."

Piet Oudolf, 2008

This quote, from one of the pre-eminent voices in the burgeoning chorus of designers exalting the forms and feelings of the wild meadows and fallow fields of our childhoods, is a like a north star for my journey as a designer. He is describing the effect of spending time in Hummelo, his own garden in the Netherlands. When I worked as part of a team at Duke Gardens to design and build the prairie landscape pictured above, one of our goals was to create a space that had that selfsame impact on the thousands who would pass through it every year. A feeling of connection to a place that whispers to you of the great big natural world we all came from. After almost twenty-years in the Botanical Garden profession striving towards that end with each design, I've found a rewarding new chapter as a private landscape designer. I'm still striving towards inspiring the emotions that Piet Oudolf so eloquently described.