There’s no time like the present to talk about the future.
That’s the premise for this edition of The New Perennialist Talks with very special guest writer Nöel Kingsbury. Our goal being to consider the future of naturalistic garden design and where it might go next.
This was a singular opportunity to put out our collective antennae and Nöel proved himself superbly qualified to lead off this discussion.
He starts things off with a 20-minute presentation to wrap our minds around the theme of Wild, drawing inspiration from his latest book. We then embark on a group discussion conducted via Q&A with our international audience of designers, landscape architects, ecologists, and passionate gardeners. I act as moderator, referee, and provocateur when necessary.
This turned out to be a fascinating and timely talk and discussion. If you missed the actual event, you can watch it now as video-on-demand in my Talks archive.
About our guest
Dr Nöel Kingsbury is an internationally known writer regarded as one of the prime architects of the ecological or naturalistic approach in modern planting design. Equally brilliant and prolific, he’s written some 25 books on various aspects of plants and gardens over the years, four of them in collaboration with legendary Dutch designer and plantsman Piet Oudolf. He has also written for Gardens Illustrated, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Garden, Hortus, The New York Times and many other publications.
Nöel has become increasingly involved with teaching and lecturing starting with a popular online series of courses with Oudolf on Learning with Experts. These efforts went super nova during the pandemic with Garden Masterclass, a far-reaching UK-based educational initiative launched with designer Annie Guilfoyle.
A New Perennial perspective
To be perfectly blunt, without Nöel, this blog would not exist. He is the one who ten years ago suggested that maybe I should think about writing a blog. On the greater plane, he’s the English writer who travelled to the Netherlands and met Piet Oudolf, which eventually led to the first of many collaborations starting with the book Designing with Plants in 2003. This was the book that reinvented many people’s concept of what gardening could be, including me.
I first met Nöel in real life on the 2013 planting design workshop with Piet Oudolf at Hummelo and in the tour that followed. We reconnected recently through my guest appearance in May on Garden Masterclass, which was tremendous fun and that inspired this return engagement. Clearly there is a lot to talk about.
Final words. I am currently in the midst of reading his latest book Wild: The Naturalistic Garden in a state of near elation and quiet amazement. IMO: It’s the book that needed to be written, a masterful overview of the naturalistic movement in garden design with a profile of international gardens arranged by degrees of wildness. Nöel’s writing feels liberated and thoughtful, illuminated by the landscape photography of Claire Takacs. Published by Phaidon, even the cover is striking.
This was our final talk of the 2022 season. It’s well worth rediscovering Wild about the Future in my Talks archive as video-on-demand.
CREDITS:
Feature image credits: Le Jardin Sec, Mèze, France. Designer: Olivier Filippi. Photography by Claire Takacs (pages 128-129)
Experimental garden for Pépinière Filippi nursery.
All garden and landscape images © Claire Takacs from Wild: The Naturalistic Garden, Phaidon, 2021
Was it recorded and can you register to watch it?
Hi Freddie,
Yes, it was recorded and it will show up in my Talks archive here on the blog sometime in early July.