Focus — The Pros at Home

Oudolf’s books. “It’s all about nature, mimicking nature—I love grasses, prairies, meadows.”

Go with the Flow

Attracted by open space, he built a home in West Dundee in 2004. The land is a big triangle, just under half an acre. “There’s no one behind us and there’s a park out front. This was a cornfield with sandy clay and we hit veins of sand when we were digging. There’s a tunnel of wind that hits the house and the 100-year-flood swale runs through the property.”

The landscape design, he says, was done on the fly. “I made it up as I went. He calls his pond a grand experiment. “I would rip it out because I know more now. I’d keep the same concept and change the circulation and I’d go deeper.” His wife Becky enjoys the pond as much as he does. “I like the reflection on the water and that’s one of the reasons we named the company Reflections,” she said.

Some of the plantings change every year. During the last Polar Vortex, he lost a large Japanese maple and GroLow Sumac. He’s cloud-pruning the boxwood into a sculpture, something he admired while working on another project. There are drifts of calamint, hellebores and wild ginger. “I try to stick to the native plants.” Redbuds in the side yard are underplanted with Jacob’s ladder and coral bells.

To celebrate his 50th birthday and 10th wedding anniversary, he planted a serviceberry. He’s planted many other native plants including bottlebrush buckeye, hackberry, sugar maples and sedges. “I’ve got plantain sedge and I’ve tried to do a big swath of oak sedge, but it browns out so I need to add more.”

The birch tree is underplanted with grey