Tom DeWitte's Dutch Prairie Garden

Fine Gardening's recent tour of the Netherlands visited the garden of Tom DeWitte, a prime example of the Dutch naturalistic and prairie-inspired planting style. The garden features loose, textural drifts of grasses, late-season perennials, and self-seeding wildflowers that create a meadow-like feel rather than a formal border.

A relaxed, layered planting of ornamental grasses, flowering shrubs, and multi-stemmed birch trees greets visitors at the front of the property. Even bordering the road, the garden maintains a wild and unstructured appearance, blending seamlessly into the surrounding farmland.

Plant Highlights and Textural Layers

A close-up view reveals golden clematis (Clematis tangutica, Zones 4 to 9) in full bloom, its recurved yellow petals and dark, tufted seed heads providing bright color. This vigorous, late-blooming vine is noted for extending color into the fall season.

Beside an outbuilding, a bed layers textures with spent hydrangea blooms fading to bronze, ferny foliage, and clouds of purple aster. Fluffy white seed heads are scattered throughout, adding a whimsical quality. Pink Japanese anemone (Anemone hupehensis sp. and cvs., Zones 4 to 8) is visible at the lower edge.

Paths and Seasonal Palette

A gravel path winds past a mounding clump of sedum (Hylotelephium sp., Zones 3 to 9) in full pink bloom, with fiery red persicaria (Persicaria amplexicaulis, Zones 4 to 8) glowing beside it. A simple seating area beneath a tree offers a view over the adjacent farmland, emphasizing the garden's rural edge.

Another path view shows the late-season palette in full swing. White Japanese anemones and purple asters line one side, while Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia, Zones 4 to 9) adds a haze of lavender-blue on the other. The farm field beyond keeps the scene connected to its rural setting.

Garden Experience and Design

The garden includes seating nooks tucked directly into the plantings, a detail that made the space particularly inviting. The source shows two tour guests relaxing beside the sedum and persicaria, illustrating how the design encourages visitors to pause and engage with the landscape. The overall design feels intentional in its wildness, with a gone-to-seed quality that is not untidy. The garden successfully blends ornamental planting with its agricultural surroundings, feeling like an extension of the open country rather than a separate enclosure.