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Supernaturalistic: The New Perennial Pond Garden

At its roots, the New Perennial movement in naturalistic planting design is about making gardens in symbiosis with nature. It calls for a wilder aesthetic, attuned to ecology, and informed by horticulture.

Inspired by naturally occurring habitats, such plantings are designed landscapes composed of a series of interwoven plant layers together forming a community, abstracting the patterns and rhythms found in nature.

There are no rules, only guidelines for the home gardener: Reduce garden inputs, recycle garden outputs; design with biodiversity & maintenance in mind; group plants by common habitat; work with the conditions you got; invite spontaneity; use plants as a living mulch to cover ground; come fall, leave plants to stand and amend in their own debris; above all, experimentation is the key to learning.

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Future Nature: Reconnecting Plants and People

In my hiatus, I’ve taken the time to study up on some of the latest thinking in ecology and planting design. I’m excited to have found some great books and strong paths of convergence well worth sharing.

My first review is for a magnum opus, ‘Naturalistic Planting Design: The Essential Guide’ written by Nigel Dunnett from Sheffield University and published earlier this year on Filbert Press.

More than living up to its title, Dunnett presents an overarching vision to shift the still emerging discipline of planting design forward to the next phase in its evolution. Let’s crack it open and take a look. 

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The Wedding Planter: Our Big Day in the Country

It was a coming together of people, plants, and pond life in our reimagined log cabin universe. It was an all-outdoor declaration of love and an occasion for my long-time girlfriend Troy and I to seal the deal with a ring.

It was our Big Day in the Country. And we’d been planning a pond-side wedding (and I’d been weeding the plantings) for months.

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Wildscaping: A Post-Earth Day Dream

Our perennial challenge is how to design plant-driven garden landscapes to express a wilder beauty while fulfilling ecological imperatives to spark biodiversity and feed the soul. 

We want to dream big and be practical all at the same time. 

To this end, I’ve captured and pulled together some of the more glowing threads from the hyperactive global conversation on how to plan, realize, and sustain designed landscapes in the public and private realm.

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Wild is the Windcliff

The Pacific West Coast is where I first found my voice.

It was decades ago that my 19-year old bohemian self flew out alone from Toronto on a one-way ticket to California, armed only with guitar, duffel bag, and a hardcover edition of James Joyce’s Ulysees.

I returned to the West Coast recently to talk about new directions in naturalistic planting design at the invitation of the Bellevue Botanical Garden in Seattle.

The invitation came with an irresistible carrot.

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