Subscribe to The New Perennialist

×

Results for Naturalistic Design

The Tao of Roy: Planting Deep from the Heart

Here at the cabin, rumours of spring are still buried arctic deep in the frozen ground.

I spy distant traces of the season to come: the rust-tipped tendrils of green moss backlit by the setting sun on forest trails; the first blades of exploratory growth in the native Seersucker sedges (Carex plantaginea); Marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) shyly poking their heads above the muck in the wetlands.

Thankfully, there are bright spots of human warmth amidst the chill. I recently caught up with mid-western prairie whisperer and great garden friend, Roy Diblik who returned to Toronto in March to speak at two local botanical gardens.

Continue reading

Uprooted: Further Adventures in the Unexpected Garden

In travel and gardens alike, I live for the unexpected. That mysterious bend in the path leading to a whole other something you could never imagine in advance.

Like a portal to another world.

My latest trip to Europe was filled with twists and turns in a month-long journey that skipped through seven different countries.

Continue reading

Supernaturalistic: A West Coast Tale

Well, I was definitely out there.

It took me over half a lifetime to return to the supersized environs of British Columbia. And while off exploring the massive old growth coastal forests of Tofino surrounding the westernmost edge of Vancouver Island, I couldn’t help but wonder aloud to the sky-capped cedars… What took me so long?

I was lured out to the West Coast by an invite to speak in Victoria as part of The Hardy Plant Study Weekend – a grand annual convergence of hort societies in the Pacific Northwest. The event is truly pan-American, rotating between Portland, Seattle, and Victoria – routinely selling out to a crowd of over 400 serious gardeners and plantophiles.

Continue reading

Wild-ish at Heart: Naturalistic garden hacks

If you’re curious to try out a more naturalistic approach to planting design, here are some practical hacks to help you get the root ball rolling

Since many gardeners are likely working with a current gardens vs. the freedom of a fresh canvas, these ideas can help you test out some smaller projects and experiments over time.

In Part One of this post, I talked about the concept of seeing plants differently: in terms of beauty and purpose, and the roles they can play within a biodiverse plant community.

Continue reading

Wild-ish at Heart: Naturalistic planting design

It’s about setting aside our desire for control to instead work in partnership with nature. This is essentially the guiding principle behind the naturalistic garden, a plant-driven approach to landscape design that has been around in one form or another since Englishman William Robinson first published his first edition of The Wild Garden in 1870.

But now with signature projects like the High Line in New York City and Chicago’s Lurie Garden, a growing global movement in planting design has found a bolder, modernist expression of this ideal with a collective dream to re-wild our nature-deprived urban worlds.

Continue reading