Planting the Dutch Wave
copyright: chambersdesign
Let’s look at an example of how to use plants with a more Dutch approach. This will help to illustrate why I prefer to use plugs with many designs. It will give me a chance to walk through other little details that I’ve learned over the years. It does take time to really get into the mindset of the Dutch Wave. It’s not as easy as it may sound. With my background being primarily building design - I found that I had to unlearn things to better reflect a more natural flow in outdoor gardens. One of the trickiest elements is using the right number of plantings. Without the correct amount, everything can seem off.
Front Yard bed
So, let’s work from an example. Say, you have a planting bed in front of your house that’s approximately 10ft x 20ft. How would you go about picking and using plants? A very popular native-ish plant is Echinacea purpurea, aka purple coneflower. If you research the flower, you will find that most gardening websites describe it as having a spread of 12 to 24inches, that is, it will be take up around 24 inches in the bed, and that you should plant each E purpurea about 2ft apart. If you go by this explanation, the bed will tend to look like a farmer’s crop - all the flowers will be in a line with lots of space between like the image below shows.
Row of Echinacea purpurea in bed 10ft x 20ft
Reality matters
But this method overlooks HOW E. purpurea spreads and acts outdoors. The spread is measured from the extent of one leaf on one side to the opposite leaf on the other side. Coneflower leaves can be big, but they don’t exclude other plants from growing nearby in the same way as a shrub. I will often cluster them together with some as close as 9 inches and others farther away. This eliminates the tendency to keep things orderly and straight. Below is a diagram shows the New Perennial Movement layout.
Coneflower planted with a more natural feel
By the NUmbers
What is automatically obvious is the number of plants. With the standard approach, you would only use 7 plants, however with the more contemporary style you can easily use 50 plugs. But with plugs vs potted plants, the cost of the 50 plugs can be less expensive than the 7 potted ones. This is one reason I like plugs. Plugs are smaller - but the time spent watching them mature is worth the savings. E. purpurea is a great year-round plant too. It’s beautiful when it starts to regrow in the spring, it’s a long-lasting bloom - sometimes popping out in mid-June and lasting into Oct - and after it goes dormant, it has an incredible presence throughout the winter. However, the bed needs other plants to intensify the sense of nature. A filler plant like a grass is a good option. A great choice is Bouteloua curtipendula. It’s a warm season grass so it doesn’t jump into action with the first hot days of early April. But once it does get started, it offers a sense of wildness that few other grasses can.
When you look up the spread of a B. curtipendula, you will find it described as 18 to 24 inches – and, like the echinacea, recommendations suggest planting them 18 to 24 inches apart. This will not produce the Dutch Wave look. In nature, the goal isn’t to form neat linear rows. The goal is to find the nearest empty piece of dirt and take ownership of it. The base of a mature B. curtipendula will be around 12 inches - yet the leaves of the grass will extend to the full 18 to 24 inches often indicated. The combination of both plants produce a planted area like the diagram shows below.
Planting with B curtipendula and E. purpurea combined
We want interaction between the grass and the flowers - for example, we want the flowers to come through the blades of grass. This type of moments is why the Dutch Wave is so popular…because when this happens, it really appears to be nature creating the garden. This layout requires 1 flat of Echinacea and 1 flat of Bouteloua. Yet, a hundred plugs is cheaper than 20 potted plants. Plus, the plugs can be installed very easily.
After you’ve got the bed completed through this step, you can consider a few individual potted plants likes Baptisia australis, Amsonia hubrichtii, Crocosmia x Curtonus or Perovshia atriplicifolia are good options. Each can be used differently and emote an array of moods. The truth is there’s a thousand different ways to take the bed to the next level, but with the Echinacea and Bouteloua you are well on your way.