Mind you, the smaller the scale, the more finely tuned the nuance and detail of plant selection and positioning become.Įcologically speaking, the natural garden is adaptable to almost any kind of ecosystem a core principle is to group plants together by common habitat, be it woodland, prairie, wetland or steppe. Or, as Mien Ruys, the late mother of modern Dutch garden design, put it: “Wild planting in a strong design.”Ī naturalistic style can be scaled up or down as needed, from the open expanse of a lawn-free front yard to a mere window box. This approach to design can work in virtually any kind of garden context or style, whether the hardscape is formal, cottage or contemporary. It seeks to minimize typical garden inputs like pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, while recycling its outputs from rainwater to garden waste, all in the name of self-sustainability. The naturalistic ethos is about creating a multi-purpose garden with the amplitude to feed the soul and nurture local biodiversity. After years of experimenting in my own northern perennial garden and getting to know some of the plants and people leading the charge, I became seriously inspired to find a way.Īllow me to share some ideas to help guide you on the path less manicured. It’s one thing to marvel at the High Line, with its ecstatic sweeps of perennials and grasses as envisioned by Dutch garden designer and plantsman Piet Oudolf, but for home gardeners, the question is, How can I bring something of this wild spirit back to my own urban garden reality?
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.īut 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. It’s about setting aside our desire for control to instead work in partnership with nature.