It's just after lunchtime in Hummelo, the Netherlands, and Anja Oudolf, having answered my phone call, is carrying the handset through the audible bustle of her nursery shop to pass me over to her husband, Piet. It becomes obvious to me at that moment that the man is never far from either his wife or his gardens - a strange paradox, considering that over the last 40 of his 66 years he has moved a huge metaphorical distance: from experimenting on his own with shrubs and grasses in the privacy of his back garden, to becoming the living embodiment of the whole'New Perennials' landscape movement; with gardens in his native Holland, the UK and more noteworthy, America, which shows him branching out with a wholly different climate and landscape tradition.
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