Noma Garden

At Noma in Copenhagen, the world-renowned New Nordic restaurant, Piet Oudolf has created a garden that feels both wild and deeply considered, embodying his signature “New Perennial” style. The garden stretches along a straight path beside the restaurant and its greenhouses, with water and reeds forming a calm backdrop, and it unfolds in three distinct zones. At the entrance, a lush, dreamlike perennial garden welcomes visitors with Oudolf’s characteristic blend of texture and movement. The middle zone becomes more experimental and edible, where annuals, perennials, and culinary plants intermingle. This area shifts each year in dialogue between Oudolf and Noma’s team, echoing the restaurant’s spirit of experimentation. At the far end lies the Fern Garden, a shaded woodland retreat planted with ferns and forest-floor species, offering a cool contrast to the open borders.

The garden is not static: each year Oudolf remains in conversation with Noma’s head gardener to refine plantings, ensuring the space continues to evolve while staying true to his vision. Seasonal rhythms are central to the experience. In late summer and autumn, Symphyotrichum ‘Little Carlow’ lights up the borders into November, before the structure of seedheads and grasses takes over in winter. By the glasshouses, Echinops and Echinacea cultivars stand alongside Imperata cylindrica, its leaves glowing red in autumn. The plantings do more than delight the eye—blooms and foliage are often gathered hours before service to garnish dishes, making the garden an active part of the kitchen.

The collaboration reveals an interplay of tempos: gardeners think in years, building long-term structure, while chefs work at the pace of the season, adapting daily to what the garden provides. The result is a living landscape that offers both beauty and utility, mirroring Noma’s philosophy of drawing creativity from nature’s cycles. True to Oudolf’s approach, the garden emphasizes form, texture, and seasonal transformation over fleeting floral display, creating a space that is at once contemplative, practical, and in constant flux.