Photo courtesy Jacqueline van der Kloet

Keynote

Jacqueline van der Kloet

Magical Mixes

Tuesday, August 14, 1:00PM

Sponsored by Colorblends Wholesale Flowerbulbs & Millennium Park Foundation

GWA is excited to announce Jacqueline Van der Kloet, internationally acclaimed garden designer and one of Holland's best-known gardening authorities will be the #GWA2018 keynote speaker. She is a pro’s pro—a plant specialist whose advice is sought by other designers and landscape architects. Her designs are prized for their artful, naturalized schemes and bold use of color, and some of her best known work includes Chicago's own Lurie Garden and the New York Botanical Garden.

World-Renowned Designer

Van der Kloet began her career as a designer of private residential gardens. Today, her client list includes some of the most prestigious public gardens in the world. In North America, she teamed with Piet Oudolf for innovative plantings at New York’s Battery Park, New York Botanical Garden and Chicago’s Lurie Garden. Her work across Europe and Asia ranges from Holland’s famous Keukenhof to the palace Huis ten Bosch in Nagasaki, Japan, to the Newport Bay Club at Disneyland, Paris. She has been a contributing designer to many international exhibitions.

Her garden designs are stylish and eclectic, with a relaxed, random feel that belies the artistry behind her plant placements. Her gardens feature inspired, often impish, mixes of perennials and bulb flowers with blooming shrubs and trees. She makes choices that surprise and delight. Her preferred palettes are soft, yet compelling, catching the eye and capturing the imagination.

Garden Writer

She is the author of 10 gardening books; the latest, Colour Your Garden, is the first available in English. Her book in progress, slated for release in Spring 2019, focuses on the role played by her own garden as a source of joy and a site for design experimentation. A naturalistic bulb planting technique she developed in that garden is now used by gardeners around the globe: Selected flower bulbs are pre-mixed in tubs or wheelbarrows, then tossed out to be planted where they fall, randomly as if planted by nature.

Van der Kloet is a graduate of the Royal Horticultural Institute for Garden and Landscape Architecture in Boskoop, The Netherlands, and of the Provincial Institute for Horticultural Studies in Anderlecht, Belgium. She has helmed her own business since 1985.

Resides on an Island

Van der Kloet lives in the Dutch town of Weesp. There, she and her colleague, landscape architect Niek Roozen, co-own a small island, where they’ve both lived with their families and had offices since the 1980s. It’s a magical setting, where their mature gardens and hedges are ringed by ancient fortifications that once played a part in the defense of Amsterdam and now host a flock of small, black-and-brown Ouessant sheep. A portion of the property has been opened to the public as a popular garden destination called “De Theetuin,” or The Tea Garden. (For a peek at her garden, plug Ossenmarkt 42, Weesp, NL into Google maps.)

#GWA2018 Keynote Sponsored by