Oudolf describes his work in a new book co-written with designer and writer Noel Kingsbury (Planting Design: Gardens in Time and Space, Timber Press, $34.95).

He was planting bulbs in Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan, where a biting wind had turned his face red and blue. Bulbs are important to his designs, but his ideas about gardening are better defined by perennials and grasses that emerge in spring and just get better as the seasons progress.

He is not the only designer to have defined this new age of herbaceous gardening, but he does have a knack for assembling dramatic groupings and recognizing how they will grow together

Oudolf is among a cohort of leading designers who bring something novel to garden-making in the 21st century: a deep knowledge of plants. This may seem ironic though not startling to anyone who has followed recent trends in landscape design, with instant gardens heavy on hardscape and screening.

Oudolf uses structure in his gardens, including clipped hedges and ornamental ponds, but it is the dynamic combinations of herbaceous plants that elevate them to an artistic level. Kathryn Gustafson, a landscape architect and collaborator, describes his capacity to choreograph plants as ?EUR??,,????'??magical.?EUR??,,????'??