Visited June 5th, 2014
Thursday we headed southwest to Enköping, a city of twenty-five green parks. The focus of our visit was the Dream Park, an informal perennial park designed by Piet Oudolf, a Dutch garden designer and plantsman. The Dream Park is planted with herbaceous perennials, spring bulbs, ornamental grasses and vertical perennials displayed in large natural drifts versa the static, formal traditional garden.
Originally the early 1980’s city parks in Enköping were planted in annuals. The Parks Department began to question the economics, design, and productivity of the repetition of the yearly routine. On a limited scale they began to incorporate perennials into the garden beds with the goal to create visual inspiration and impact. This was successful. They continued with extensive plantings of bulbous plants that extend the blooming season and mixed with summer and autumn perennials plus ornamental grasses. Now Enköping is considered one of the best Park and Garden towns in Sweden.
Our guide Jessica first walked us through city streets along the Enköping River before entering Dream Park. Flowerbeds were planted along side the paths on either side of the walks winding along the riverbed. Benches in defined sitting areas were along the pathways surrounded by the flowerbeds but with a view to the water. Hedges and trees planted along the streets separated the motor traffic from the pedestrian walkway.
Our entrance to the largest park Drömparken or Dream Park, created in 1996 by Piet Oudolf (and expanded in 2002-2003), was through a woodland area with a bridge over the Enköping River, which winds its way through the series of parks. Borders along the curving pathways were natural but well maintained. Perennials such as cranesbill (Geranium macrorrhizum) and Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) were used as natural borders between groups of plantings and the lawn areas.
The Dream Park avoids a monoculture by creating a community of plants that are compatible and can coexist with each other. Trees and shrubs are also incorporated as a part of the companion plantings of herbaceous perennials. The Allium aflatunese ‘Purple Sensation’ provided the vertical show at the time of our early June visit. Numerous varieties of miscanthus and other grasses and perennials that are planted for their vertical and textural interest would follow shortly. The allium was often used as a companion with other early summer blooming perennials. This provides interest in the variety of color combinations, textures, shapes and heights, which are important in Oudolf’s visual creations.
Pocket Parks, which are small intimate areas as defined rooms with clipped hedges, were created within many of the town parks. At Dream Park, the pocket park is designed around a Pump House from the 18th century. Manicured larch hedges define the area with benches under shade trees, and a pond with bubbling water all to convey a sense of serenity. With a border of hornbeam hedges and cherry trees against the city street, a buffer is created to block out the sight and noise of traffic. The flowerbed bordering the brick walkway included several varieties of ground hugging geraniums plus familiar garden daylily, heuchera, hosta, sneezeweed, loosestrife, speedwell and catnip. For vertical and textural interest there are several varieties of purple moor grass, sedges and miscanthus. Walnut and Magnolia are trees in the Pocket Park with Norway Maples as a border on each side of the pump house lawn.
Formality is included in the park where a series of tall cylinder European Beech tree hedges enclose a small circular paved area as in a room. Contemporary sculpture is place here with the manicured clipped hedges. Between hedges a network of walkways connects each grouping. Through the opening the eye will follow to a distant view in the garden.
Jessica explained how maintenance is kept to a minimum. The tulips and other early spring plants that have withered are carefully cut back with a trimmer so as not to damage the summer shoots or bulbs breaking the surface of the ground. In the late autumn the perennials are mowed over and the plant debris is left, as it is in the springtime, on the ground to decompose with worms and microorganisms that provide nutrients. Plants are only divided when necessary. Older beds are given a couple of inches (3-5 cm) top dressing of nutrient enriched soil. The basic soil in the park is heavy clay so the ground level was raised an additional 12 inches, (30 cm) with an addition of light synthetic soil mix to provide drainage. An irrigation system is used throughout the park.
With over 230 different varieties of perennials planted in this garden in addition to shrubs, hedges and the mature trees in the parks landscape (and twenty-four other gardens that require attention), it is important to have a combination of plants that are self sustaining. Dream Parks’ philosophy is to provide visual interest throughout the four seasons with subtle color compositions that are distinctive and use striking contrast in heights plus a variety in foliage texture and seed head shapes. The Dream Park is a park the home gardener, (who may have limited garden time) could visit, “window shop” and create a natural planting scheme of their own. Sweden’s Drömparken is a garden of “tried-and-true” perennials.
We left Enköping’s Dream park with it’s thousands of purple flower head alliums just as it started to rain. The coach headed southwest to Lake Vättern and a Chinese garden in a unique location for our next visit.
Photos by Deborah McMillin