Wolfgang Oehme

Wolfgang Oehme (May 18, 1930 Chemnitz, Saxony – December 15, 2011, Towson, Maryland) was a German landscape architect.

Oehme grew up in Wissmannhof in Chemnitz. Oehme left school in 1947 and began an apprenticeship at the nursery Illge. After completing his apprenticeship he worked in urban garden office, where he was a landscape architect with Hans-Joachim Bauer, and with the ideas of Karl Foerster, was familiar. From 1952 he worked at the nursery Spaeth in Baumschulenweg in East Berlin.

Oehme studied from 1952 to 1954 in Dahlem with a scholarship in landscape architecture. In 1953, he helped on the site of the International Garden Festival in Old Elbpark in Hamburg to create trenches. He admired the designer of the Expo, Karl Plomin. Oehme moved in 1953 to West Berlin. After graduation, he worked in the nursery, Waterer Sons & Crisp in Bagshot and then got a job with the city parks department in Frankfurt am Main. From 1956 he was employed by the company Delius in Nuremberg. Oehme, a great admirer of the works of Karl May emigrated in 1957 on the recommendation of Hubert Owens from Nuremberg to the United States after Christmas. After stops in Ireland, Iceland and Newfoundland, he landed at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Initially, he worked for the landscape architect Bruce Baetjer before 1959 in the Baltimore County Office of Planning and was hired by the Baltimore County Recreation and Parks as a landscape architect. He designed, among other things, playgrounds and golf courses. In 1966 he joined the firm Rouse Co. and designed gardens with ornamental grasses and perennials, but without lawns. His work was difficult because there were hardly any nurseries that sell plants suitable. With the help of Leo Vollmer, and partner Kurt Bluemel, he found a nursery that could provide appropriate plants. In 1977, Oehme and the American landscape architect Sweden James created his own firm in Washington, D.C., Oehme, van Sweden & Associates (OvS). In 2008 he retired from the company and founded, with Carol Oppenheimer, the WOCO Organic Gardens LLC.

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