What do you think?
Rate this book
Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes
“As practical as it is poetic. . . . an optimistic call to action.” — Chicago Tribune
Over time, with industrialization and urban sprawl, we have driven nature out of our neighborhoods and cities. But we can invite it back by designing landscapes that look and function more like they do in the robust, diverse, and visually harmonious. Planting in a Post-Wild World by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West is an inspiring call to action dedicated to the idea of a new nature—a hybrid of both the wild and the cultivated—that can flourish in our cities and suburbs. This is both a post-wild manifesto and practical guide that describes how to incorporate and layer plants into plant communities to create an environment that is reflective of natural systems and thrives within our built world.
Over time, with industrialization and urban sprawl, we have driven nature out of our neighborhoods and cities. But we can invite it back by designing landscapes that look and function more like they do in the robust, diverse, and visually harmonious. Planting in a Post-Wild World by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West is an inspiring call to action dedicated to the idea of a new nature—a hybrid of both the wild and the cultivated—that can flourish in our cities and suburbs. This is both a post-wild manifesto and practical guide that describes how to incorporate and layer plants into plant communities to create an environment that is reflective of natural systems and thrives within our built world.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 2015
254 people are currently reading
2460 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews
August 23, 2018
Interesting enough in concept (and pretty pictures), but unclear exactly who the audience is here. Home gardener with TONS of money and an estate, I guess? But some interesting take aways re: planting/landscaping with wilderness in mind. However: minus 10 points from Slytherin for sentences like "Imagine for a moment what it must have been like for the first European colonists arriving on the shores of America" and then waxing white-washed nostalgic for the "virgin" land "we" arrived to. Ugh.
January 3, 2016
Those random little manufactured planting beds outside of Target, the grocery store, lining the pedestrian walkways in your city... Pansies, petunias, and maybe a random boxwood or juniper, right?
This book, while about plants and land use, is also about humans and society. Professional landscape designers, as well as the common gardener can take something away from this beautiful book. Yes, we want wild spaces to remain wild and untouched, but how can we bring this aesthetic, this biome into our urban spaces, suburban parking lots and business parks, and even in post-industrial/farming/rural landscapes that could be wild again?
This is a practical guide - discussing plants, heights, native species, management and maintenance, but also societal, and personal relationships with nature and habitats. My favorite chapter/section was entitled "The Inspiration of the Wild" and had detailed descriptions about three specific land archetypes, and how they play into human culture (folktales, songs, literature) and also into our livelihoods and general aesthetic. The authors look at grasslands and savannas, shrublands/marshes, and forests, discussing in detail each of these landscape archetypes. (Unfortunately, deserts were not discussed here, but many of the themes, especially of "edge" environments can apply to deserts.) The archetypes lead to technical discussion of designing these spaces and land use, which is fascinating itself, using colors, plant heights, etc. One theme that was brought up a number of times resonated with me. It's about the whole habitat - not just the individual plant. Gardeners plant things apart to cultivate them, spread apart, mulched, cleared, weeded - but nature is not orderly in this way. This book makes a case for managing a landscape rather than maintaining an individual plant/s.
The final part of the book showcases this design method in many environments- small "beds" and ponds, green spaces in urban areas, rooftop gardens that use savanna grasses or meadow plants, interior tree groves and mosses planted and managed inside buildings, etc. On a larger scale, there are also land trust sites, preserves, and arboretums also described and showcased in a larger environment with more room to design.
The spaces are designed, yes, but they recall this natural element that appeals to us and desire for the "natural". And NO pansies or petunias in sight! I'd love to see more of these natural spaces, however large or small, incorporated into landscape design around my city and suburbs!
A beautiful book, with great writing too. Recommended to anyone into plants, land use, and human / nature interaction.
This book, while about plants and land use, is also about humans and society. Professional landscape designers, as well as the common gardener can take something away from this beautiful book. Yes, we want wild spaces to remain wild and untouched, but how can we bring this aesthetic, this biome into our urban spaces, suburban parking lots and business parks, and even in post-industrial/farming/rural landscapes that could be wild again?
This is a practical guide - discussing plants, heights, native species, management and maintenance, but also societal, and personal relationships with nature and habitats. My favorite chapter/section was entitled "The Inspiration of the Wild" and had detailed descriptions about three specific land archetypes, and how they play into human culture (folktales, songs, literature) and also into our livelihoods and general aesthetic. The authors look at grasslands and savannas, shrublands/marshes, and forests, discussing in detail each of these landscape archetypes. (Unfortunately, deserts were not discussed here, but many of the themes, especially of "edge" environments can apply to deserts.) The archetypes lead to technical discussion of designing these spaces and land use, which is fascinating itself, using colors, plant heights, etc. One theme that was brought up a number of times resonated with me. It's about the whole habitat - not just the individual plant. Gardeners plant things apart to cultivate them, spread apart, mulched, cleared, weeded - but nature is not orderly in this way. This book makes a case for managing a landscape rather than maintaining an individual plant/s.
The final part of the book showcases this design method in many environments- small "beds" and ponds, green spaces in urban areas, rooftop gardens that use savanna grasses or meadow plants, interior tree groves and mosses planted and managed inside buildings, etc. On a larger scale, there are also land trust sites, preserves, and arboretums also described and showcased in a larger environment with more room to design.
The spaces are designed, yes, but they recall this natural element that appeals to us and desire for the "natural". And NO pansies or petunias in sight! I'd love to see more of these natural spaces, however large or small, incorporated into landscape design around my city and suburbs!
A beautiful book, with great writing too. Recommended to anyone into plants, land use, and human / nature interaction.
July 14, 2018
This is really for landscape designers moreso that the average homeowner. Nevertheless, some ideas are really good. As someone who has bought dozens of cubic yards of mulch over the years, I really like their idea of "green mulch", or having layers of plants covering the ground instead of mulch.
Really nice photos too.
Really nice photos too.
January 10, 2016
First, the cons: This book is targeted more at landscape designers than the home gardener, which is especially clear when you get to the practical considerations section. The consistent use of only scientific names for plants throughout the text also makes it more burdensome than it really needs to be (yes, common names vary, but a combo of common and scientific names would make for an easier read and give many readers touchpoints to better understand the examples).
The pros are that this is a beautiful book, well-written, and provides a lot of food for thought when considering how to design a planting, as well as how to better utilize available planting space. Overall, it's definitely worth a read for anybody looking to plant a new garden and/or renovate current plantings.
The pros are that this is a beautiful book, well-written, and provides a lot of food for thought when considering how to design a planting, as well as how to better utilize available planting space. Overall, it's definitely worth a read for anybody looking to plant a new garden and/or renovate current plantings.
February 26, 2021
Full disclosure: I have an agenda. About seven years ago, the lightbulb finally went on and I realized the linchpin role of native plants in ecosystems --- including the food web that feeds me and you and everyone else on the planet --- and since then, I have had to relearn almost everything I thought I knew about gardening. And there are very few book authors that "get it." Most gardening and landscaping books continue to gush over big, exotic (useless) flowers like teenage boys drooling over the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Only nice to look at if you don't care that the whole picture is warped and unhealthy.
Now I'm reading with a critical eye for sustainability and pollinator support, two things I won't compromise (anymore) in my garden. And it's a win-win: I take care of the planet, and the planet takes care of me, and all of us.
If you're still with me, I have to confess I have mixed emotions about "Planting in a Post-Wild World" by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West. The book has what might be called the "good scientist" seal of approval on the cover: a quote praising the book from Doug Tallamy, the entomologist/messiah of native plant proselytizers and one of my personal heroes. So I'm confused especially by the section of the book titled "The Role of Native Plants".
As the title implies, the basic premise of the book is that the planet has been so altered by human intervention that it's now "post-wild" and human intervention is needed to restore it. West and Rainer are clearly both talented designers, and I sympathize deeply with both of the "origin stories" they share in the introduction: one watched the woods of his youth slowly wiped out by development; the other grew up in an industrial wasteland in Eastern Europe that is slowly being rehabilitated. But, despite those science-y looking charts in the first chapter, they say things that don't make sense to me, like "In fact, a plant community may be composed of all exotic species and still engage in ecological processes similar to a naturally occurring community" and "All species---native and exotic---have specific ecological niches and interact with their environments and other plants."
Well, yes, exotic plants do interact with "their environments" if you define that to be absorbing water and nutrients from soil and converting sunshine to sugar and giving off oxygen, like a good little houseplant. But in a naturally occurring community, plants don't just interact with other plants in a fight for soil, sunlight, and water. In a naturally occurring community, the ecological processes they engage in include trading nectar for pollination services with (usually) specific and highly specialized butterflies, moths, bees, beetles, and in some cases birds. Many bee species in North America are oligolectic meaning they specialize on only one or a few species of plants due to the specialized relationship between floral structure and the pollen harvesting apparatus of the insects, so exotic flowers are useless to them. It's highly likely that the bees you may see busily gorging themselves on non-native plants are exotics too, and maybe not even the useful European honeybee, an omnivore par excellence that is having a hard go of it too thanks to pesticides. And those competitive exotic plants are a food desert to the larvae of butterflies and moths, aka caterpillars, who generally can eat only a single species, their host plant(s). Caterpillars have developed highly sophisticated chemical defenses so they can (gasp!) chew on the leaves of host plants to grow rapidly before their miraculous transformation into butterfly or moth. For example, if you want Spicebush Swallowtail butterflies you'd better have spicebush or one of only three or four other host plants nearby, because their caterpillars will literally starve on any other plant.
According to West and Rainer, the worst possible result of using exotic plants is that it "...increases the burden on the designer to understand how the plant will perform in a novel community..." and "...the most compelling reason for starting with native plant communities is to give the site a sense of authenticity." Native plants are not just authentic to the site, they are key to the food web that supports biodiversity and also to the water cycle, to carbon sequestration, to soil fertility, and the list goes on. Their value is surely more than "authenticity" and exotic plants that look like they belong are not in any true sense authentic.
While the book offers a sophisticated system for restoring a facsimile of nature, and presents a well-thought out system of designing landscapes that recall prairies, woodlands, and forests, it falls short in emphasizing that native plants aren't just nice to have: they're essential to healing nature's systems. I'm not sure why Doug Tallamy was so enthusiastic about this book when it could have been so much better if they had edited just two pages to make that point.
And while I don't believe we can recreate nature as it was in the past, and I don't even think every exotic species needs ripped up or cut down down immediately, we can and should go for 75% native or more. This book missed the mark for me. Three confused stars.
Now I'm reading with a critical eye for sustainability and pollinator support, two things I won't compromise (anymore) in my garden. And it's a win-win: I take care of the planet, and the planet takes care of me, and all of us.
If you're still with me, I have to confess I have mixed emotions about "Planting in a Post-Wild World" by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West. The book has what might be called the "good scientist" seal of approval on the cover: a quote praising the book from Doug Tallamy, the entomologist/messiah of native plant proselytizers and one of my personal heroes. So I'm confused especially by the section of the book titled "The Role of Native Plants".
As the title implies, the basic premise of the book is that the planet has been so altered by human intervention that it's now "post-wild" and human intervention is needed to restore it. West and Rainer are clearly both talented designers, and I sympathize deeply with both of the "origin stories" they share in the introduction: one watched the woods of his youth slowly wiped out by development; the other grew up in an industrial wasteland in Eastern Europe that is slowly being rehabilitated. But, despite those science-y looking charts in the first chapter, they say things that don't make sense to me, like "In fact, a plant community may be composed of all exotic species and still engage in ecological processes similar to a naturally occurring community" and "All species---native and exotic---have specific ecological niches and interact with their environments and other plants."
Well, yes, exotic plants do interact with "their environments" if you define that to be absorbing water and nutrients from soil and converting sunshine to sugar and giving off oxygen, like a good little houseplant. But in a naturally occurring community, plants don't just interact with other plants in a fight for soil, sunlight, and water. In a naturally occurring community, the ecological processes they engage in include trading nectar for pollination services with (usually) specific and highly specialized butterflies, moths, bees, beetles, and in some cases birds. Many bee species in North America are oligolectic meaning they specialize on only one or a few species of plants due to the specialized relationship between floral structure and the pollen harvesting apparatus of the insects, so exotic flowers are useless to them. It's highly likely that the bees you may see busily gorging themselves on non-native plants are exotics too, and maybe not even the useful European honeybee, an omnivore par excellence that is having a hard go of it too thanks to pesticides. And those competitive exotic plants are a food desert to the larvae of butterflies and moths, aka caterpillars, who generally can eat only a single species, their host plant(s). Caterpillars have developed highly sophisticated chemical defenses so they can (gasp!) chew on the leaves of host plants to grow rapidly before their miraculous transformation into butterfly or moth. For example, if you want Spicebush Swallowtail butterflies you'd better have spicebush or one of only three or four other host plants nearby, because their caterpillars will literally starve on any other plant.
According to West and Rainer, the worst possible result of using exotic plants is that it "...increases the burden on the designer to understand how the plant will perform in a novel community..." and "...the most compelling reason for starting with native plant communities is to give the site a sense of authenticity." Native plants are not just authentic to the site, they are key to the food web that supports biodiversity and also to the water cycle, to carbon sequestration, to soil fertility, and the list goes on. Their value is surely more than "authenticity" and exotic plants that look like they belong are not in any true sense authentic.
While the book offers a sophisticated system for restoring a facsimile of nature, and presents a well-thought out system of designing landscapes that recall prairies, woodlands, and forests, it falls short in emphasizing that native plants aren't just nice to have: they're essential to healing nature's systems. I'm not sure why Doug Tallamy was so enthusiastic about this book when it could have been so much better if they had edited just two pages to make that point.
And while I don't believe we can recreate nature as it was in the past, and I don't even think every exotic species needs ripped up or cut down down immediately, we can and should go for 75% native or more. This book missed the mark for me. Three confused stars.
February 1, 2020
As a lanscape designer with a degree in landscspe architecture I applaud this book's goal of creating more-natural types of planting deseigns. In this sense it feels refreshing and new.
Full stop.
It completely fails to discuss plants and their relationships with their native environment, including any interactions with native soil organisms or larger animals. Native bees? Who cares? Native caterpillars for native birds? Irrelevant. In this sense it feels as dated as a rotary phone.
Design-wise it's an interesting read. Ecologically, it falls well short. I'm surprised Doug Tallamy had a positive quote on the front cover, as this book seems like a one-step-forward (design), one-step-back (local ecology) kind of thing.
Full stop.
It completely fails to discuss plants and their relationships with their native environment, including any interactions with native soil organisms or larger animals. Native bees? Who cares? Native caterpillars for native birds? Irrelevant. In this sense it feels as dated as a rotary phone.
Design-wise it's an interesting read. Ecologically, it falls well short. I'm surprised Doug Tallamy had a positive quote on the front cover, as this book seems like a one-step-forward (design), one-step-back (local ecology) kind of thing.
March 12, 2016
I wish there was a *little* more actionable content, but the essays are still very interesting and don't take away from it. Kind of caters to high-level thinking on this stuff, and on design at a level for more hard-core professionals than mere hobbyists or enthusiasts (like me). Found the case-study format of the actual plans the best part of this book; showed what can be done with a kind of space and how to do it.
April 26, 2020
Aside from a few Michael Pollan books, I don't know the first thing about gardening and landscaping, so you may want to take this enthusiastic response to Thomas Rainer and Claudia West's Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes with a grain of salt.
Rainer and West argue that we should design landscapes that are both functional and aesthetic. We can see the functional in plants that thrive naturally in wild spaces, or just in parts of a town that have some dirt and lichens. Hardy climates call for hardy plants, and there is neither functional nor aesthetic sense in planting a bunch of daffodils in a taxing ecosystem. As for aesthetics, well, I don't have a great eye for aesthetics. Decor, fashion, and paintings are mostly opaque to me. And shapes, colors, patterns, and textures are all beyond me individually let alone smushed together. But Rainer and West call on planters to design around three archetypes: grasslands, woodlands, and forests. They offer guidelines about how to design around these archetypes. As I went for a run this morning, I was modestly pleased to discover that I could now spot these archetypes. Areas that used to code in my brain as "there are some plants there" now read as "someone has used grasses and plant cover to express a grassland archetype." In other words, I was able to see both agency and design.
There are other moments in the book worth consideration. First, there is a taxonomy of plants based on their strategy for survival. Interesting! I was also fascinated by how their lives had guided them to this philosophy. Rainer arrives at "designed plant communities" after a life of American environmental decline. West, who grew up in East Germany, saw environmental degradation (indiscriminate use of pesticides and reckless disposal of pollutants) in her youth but has lived through environmental recovery. I also found their calls for designed plant communities interesting after recently finishing Kim Stanley Robinson's Martian trilogy. In it, people terraform Mars according 'ecopoetics,' which does not sound so far from the balance between function and aesthetics Rainer and West advocate. Readers of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline might also appreciate their ability to find beauty within functional plants rather than romantic flowers.
Sometimes, it's tricky to tell if books are great or if they're just low-hanging fruit for the reader. For me, perhaps it's the latter. But if you've read very little about gardens and landscaping, I recommend Designing Plant Communities. We should always be open to books that will make the world around us a bit more decipherable.
Rainer and West argue that we should design landscapes that are both functional and aesthetic. We can see the functional in plants that thrive naturally in wild spaces, or just in parts of a town that have some dirt and lichens. Hardy climates call for hardy plants, and there is neither functional nor aesthetic sense in planting a bunch of daffodils in a taxing ecosystem. As for aesthetics, well, I don't have a great eye for aesthetics. Decor, fashion, and paintings are mostly opaque to me. And shapes, colors, patterns, and textures are all beyond me individually let alone smushed together. But Rainer and West call on planters to design around three archetypes: grasslands, woodlands, and forests. They offer guidelines about how to design around these archetypes. As I went for a run this morning, I was modestly pleased to discover that I could now spot these archetypes. Areas that used to code in my brain as "there are some plants there" now read as "someone has used grasses and plant cover to express a grassland archetype." In other words, I was able to see both agency and design.
There are other moments in the book worth consideration. First, there is a taxonomy of plants based on their strategy for survival. Interesting! I was also fascinated by how their lives had guided them to this philosophy. Rainer arrives at "designed plant communities" after a life of American environmental decline. West, who grew up in East Germany, saw environmental degradation (indiscriminate use of pesticides and reckless disposal of pollutants) in her youth but has lived through environmental recovery. I also found their calls for designed plant communities interesting after recently finishing Kim Stanley Robinson's Martian trilogy. In it, people terraform Mars according 'ecopoetics,' which does not sound so far from the balance between function and aesthetics Rainer and West advocate. Readers of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline might also appreciate their ability to find beauty within functional plants rather than romantic flowers.
Sometimes, it's tricky to tell if books are great or if they're just low-hanging fruit for the reader. For me, perhaps it's the latter. But if you've read very little about gardens and landscaping, I recommend Designing Plant Communities. We should always be open to books that will make the world around us a bit more decipherable.
September 20, 2022
Somewhere in the 4 1/2 star range because for all I love it, might be a little too aimed at the crowd who have large swaths of land available to them, either as estate holders or landscape architects. The smallest parcel of land discussed is the courtyard of the New York Times , which is remarkable and a great example of the "Forest" typology.
The typology is at the heart of the book--prairie, forest, woodland and "transitional," a sort of in-between the others--in designing spaces that are managed rather than strictly maintained. As managed landscapes, one only has to keep the frames sharp, selectively weed invasives or non-desirable plants and keep the overall view pleasant, rather than obsessing over each individual plant. The impact of the middle-distance view is kind of the key. Forest typology benefits from a view of parallel-ish trunks, verdant ground cover and not much in-between. Instead of having a lot of variety of colors and textures, there's a repetition and blowiness that allows the eye to rest. Again, the Times courtyard is a paragon with maybe three species total, and a seasonal palette of green, white and gold. Prairie design, exemplified by the work of Dutch designer Piet Oudolf such as the High Line, may have more species, but they are still repeating and random within the plant community. The authors recommend creating layers from low to high, including seasonal bloomers for each season.
For as natural as these landscapes look, the authors are gardeners, not naturalists. These are designed spaces and are allowed to include non-native plants. There's a weariness about the native/non-native debate, which the authors see as reductive, especially in the face of climate change where the plants that best perform in a space may not be those that previously grew there. Additionally, the authors often iterate the sharp lines, especially hardscaped walkways, are necessary in giving these places a civilized veneer. Cease to mow your lawn and invite weeds and you may get an HOA citation. Do the same thing, but include some smart raised brick partitions and you are a landscape artist.
The typology is at the heart of the book--prairie, forest, woodland and "transitional," a sort of in-between the others--in designing spaces that are managed rather than strictly maintained. As managed landscapes, one only has to keep the frames sharp, selectively weed invasives or non-desirable plants and keep the overall view pleasant, rather than obsessing over each individual plant. The impact of the middle-distance view is kind of the key. Forest typology benefits from a view of parallel-ish trunks, verdant ground cover and not much in-between. Instead of having a lot of variety of colors and textures, there's a repetition and blowiness that allows the eye to rest. Again, the Times courtyard is a paragon with maybe three species total, and a seasonal palette of green, white and gold. Prairie design, exemplified by the work of Dutch designer Piet Oudolf such as the High Line, may have more species, but they are still repeating and random within the plant community. The authors recommend creating layers from low to high, including seasonal bloomers for each season.
For as natural as these landscapes look, the authors are gardeners, not naturalists. These are designed spaces and are allowed to include non-native plants. There's a weariness about the native/non-native debate, which the authors see as reductive, especially in the face of climate change where the plants that best perform in a space may not be those that previously grew there. Additionally, the authors often iterate the sharp lines, especially hardscaped walkways, are necessary in giving these places a civilized veneer. Cease to mow your lawn and invite weeds and you may get an HOA citation. Do the same thing, but include some smart raised brick partitions and you are a landscape artist.
Read
September 7, 2021This book is full of beautiful photos of a variety of landscapes and gardens. The rooftop gardens and glass-walled atriums, beautiful as they are, are like a polar bear in a zoo: they allow a few humans to appreciate a little bit of the beauty of the living world, but they're not doing anything to stop it becoming extinct.
The authors' goal is to show the reader how to create good design by considering "the relationships of 1) plants to place, 2) plants to people, and 3) plants to other plants. . . . Finally, plants are related to other plants by carefully layering them into various niches, resulting in a truly functional community with the highest possible ecological value." But I don't see how a community has any ecological value if the only living things in it are 1) humans and 2) the plants that a designer has chosen and placed there.
This book is aimed at landscape designers, but has advice that is applicable to my little yard:
Remember that plants are a community, not isolated individuals; each is always affecting the conditions the others live in.
You can help plants co-exist and even sustain each other by thinking of the layers, above and below ground, and the divisions in time throughout the year, that each of them needs to flourish.
My blooming, buzzing confusion is a delight to me, but may look like a mess to my neighbors. I can increase their enjoyment by designing a landscape that is legible.
The authors' goal is to show the reader how to create good design by considering "the relationships of 1) plants to place, 2) plants to people, and 3) plants to other plants. . . . Finally, plants are related to other plants by carefully layering them into various niches, resulting in a truly functional community with the highest possible ecological value." But I don't see how a community has any ecological value if the only living things in it are 1) humans and 2) the plants that a designer has chosen and placed there.
This book is aimed at landscape designers, but has advice that is applicable to my little yard:
Remember that plants are a community, not isolated individuals; each is always affecting the conditions the others live in.
You can help plants co-exist and even sustain each other by thinking of the layers, above and below ground, and the divisions in time throughout the year, that each of them needs to flourish.
My blooming, buzzing confusion is a delight to me, but may look like a mess to my neighbors. I can increase their enjoyment by designing a landscape that is legible.
June 9, 2018
I don't entirely agree with the author's premises as I am much more of a purist when it comes to planting natives, but there were some valuable concepts in here, such as planting to reflect real natural habitats, creating landscape layers all the way to the ground. Plus "how to" info on ratio of structural layer plants to middle and ground layers, and how to go about preparing the site and installing. I think the text is more geared to landscapers than home gardeners such as I, but still valuable.
September 18, 2017
Outstanding. I've been struggling with how to "mass" plants without looking strange in the landscape. I want big impact and keep weeds down, drought tolerance, and native if it is appropriate for the space. This book outlines the strategy I've been struggling to figure out on my own. Designing a "plant community" in layers makes all the sense in the world to me... this book is especially for new gardeners but all gardeners can learn a lot from the methods presented here.
April 9, 2021
I first became aware of Planting in a Post-Wild World a few years back when attending a professional conference of landscape architects and hearing the authors speak. It prompted me to buy, read and even incorporate some of their novel ideas into my work. The best success I have had with approach has been with green roofs, but I have also applied it to the ground plane.
Because there few reviews, I thought I would write one here on Goodreads. These days, I read more novels than non-fiction, so my regular followers may be surprised to find a review of this book. I hope, though, that this review will help spread the word about this important book.
Planting in a Post-Wild World is a valuable resource for landscape architects, of which I am one. It presents a different view of planting design, a different way of thinking about the developed landscapes — thinking which incorporates the concept of systems and the growth cycles of plants.
Most of our landscapes are no longer “wild”, and attempts to replicate the wild with native plant restorations are valiant, sometimes not successfully achieved, and frequently unsuitable at the garden scale. “Gardens” are artificial constructs, even when filled with native plants. The authors provide an alternate technique to achieving success with plants, mimicking the “wild” dynamic relationships of plants to each other.
Five stars and kudos to Rainer (a landscape architect) and West (the owner of a perennial nursery). There are so many books out there about planting design that do not explore new ground, and so it is refreshing, to say the least, to read one which is counterpoint to conventional approaches.
And, if you are an enthusiastic and adventurous sort of gardener, with a blank slate piece of ground, you might try an experiment to see if this would work on a small scale in your own personal garden. This book could help you to do that. At the very least, it will lead you to think about your garden in a different sort of way.
Because there few reviews, I thought I would write one here on Goodreads. These days, I read more novels than non-fiction, so my regular followers may be surprised to find a review of this book. I hope, though, that this review will help spread the word about this important book.
Planting in a Post-Wild World is a valuable resource for landscape architects, of which I am one. It presents a different view of planting design, a different way of thinking about the developed landscapes — thinking which incorporates the concept of systems and the growth cycles of plants.
Most of our landscapes are no longer “wild”, and attempts to replicate the wild with native plant restorations are valiant, sometimes not successfully achieved, and frequently unsuitable at the garden scale. “Gardens” are artificial constructs, even when filled with native plants. The authors provide an alternate technique to achieving success with plants, mimicking the “wild” dynamic relationships of plants to each other.
Five stars and kudos to Rainer (a landscape architect) and West (the owner of a perennial nursery). There are so many books out there about planting design that do not explore new ground, and so it is refreshing, to say the least, to read one which is counterpoint to conventional approaches.
And, if you are an enthusiastic and adventurous sort of gardener, with a blank slate piece of ground, you might try an experiment to see if this would work on a small scale in your own personal garden. This book could help you to do that. At the very least, it will lead you to think about your garden in a different sort of way.
August 4, 2021
"As populations expand and resources become increasingly limited, plantings can no longer be just ornamental backdrops for our buildings. They must instead perform double duty: cleaning our storm water, providing a food source for pollinators, and acting as kind of genetic reservoir for diversity. Achieving this requires understanding how plants fit together, how they change over time, and how they form stable compositions."
This book was a delight to read. While targeted more at landscape designers than the layperson, the later (i.e. myself) still has plenty to learn from this book. "Planting in a Post-Wild World" explores how we can take an ecosystem approach to gardens and plantings. It considers how best to create resilient landscapes by paying attention to the existing ecosystem and building on its strengths, rather than continuing with extractive, resource-intensive landscape practices that look nice aesthetically but are false and contributing to ecological problems.
This guide won't tell you what species of plant to use when designing; rather, it lays out high-level principles and frameworks and shows you how to adapt them to your own site. This point - understanding the site itself, and working with it, rather than against it - is emphasized over and over. But the book also notes it's not sufficient to choose 'good plants.' The human relationship matters as well. Pollinator plots are lovely, but if the surrounding community hates them because they look scraggly and messy, what's the point?
Planting in a Post-Wild World notes there's a lot of heavy lifting to do when it comes to using plants and restoration to solve ecological problems. For all the praise being heaped on things like native plants right now, it's much easier said than done to simply get an ecologically thriving community going. If you're up for the challenge, however, this book is a great place to help you start thinking through how to do it.
"Designing plant communities require...plant lovers who understand that we don't need to go to a national park to have a spiritual experience of nature; we can have such experiences in our backyards, parks, and rooftops."
February 23, 2023
Read this book since it seems to be the go-to for landscape designers getting into ecological planting. So many big, beautiful photos wonderfully illustrate the concepts. There are also some really helpful charts and diagrams. The middle of the book felt repetitive (I didn’t need 30 pages to understand layering) but again the photos kept my interest. I wish they included examples from places beyond the US and Europe, though I understand the climate zones are similar between those areas and therefore probably most familiar. Overall, I felt inspired each day I read this book and will likely reference it in the future when I design a planting of my own.
November 23, 2020
I really liked this book for the conceptual and philosophical overview of plant communities. I need additional resources to help translate these to my own space and region. It does seem this book is aimed at experienced gardeners and landscape designers, but I got a lot out of it in an overview/sense of purpose/finding a direction way.
September 8, 2021
Love the thoughts behind this gardening book. It’s not your typical gardening book. It focuses on how to plant to keep weeds down naturally through other plants, and planting in a way that mimics nature. It did seem like it was written for an audience already very familiar with gardening/landscape architecture. I’m excited to get started in my yard little by little.
April 2, 2025
The ideas are interesting, but the plans are vague. The discussion on establishing and troubleshooting plants' growth is useful, but I really dislike when books only use the scientific names of plants, making them much harder to remember for later. This book is geared more toward landscape designers and less toward the home gardeners.
October 13, 2024
Erase the impact of indigenous culture on the North American landscape pre-euro settler contact. Assume you have a huge landscape to work with and endless money. Assume you need a dry text to fall asleep with before bed. Still interested? This is for you.
July 19, 2023
Excellent. Convincing argument on planting in the likes of globalization and climate change with a clear framework to follow. Something in between a manifesto and a guide, it provides simple principles and concepts to enable this style of planting. It provides orientation into what and how to do it but you’ll need other guides for specific how-to knowledge. A great book to read first on your naturalistic planting journey.
April 12, 2025
Targeting landscaping professionals, an interesting look at how to adapt and design plantings to accommodate the site.
November 3, 2020
Unless you are really into design this is book is a bit in the weeds (LOL).
If you are a budding landscape designer or in school to be one, this would be a very good book to read.
It was more than I really wanted to know, but that does not take away from the book. It was just not for me.
If you are a budding landscape designer or in school to be one, this would be a very good book to read.
It was more than I really wanted to know, but that does not take away from the book. It was just not for me.
August 23, 2024
If I made my living as a professional landscape designer (Rainer's target audience) I am quite sure that I would award this book 5 stars. Although the photos are gorgeous the exclusive use of Latin names for the plant life left me wondering what I was looking at and reading about.
The last paragraphs are lovely though and apply to anyone who loves green space, wherever it can be found:
"The time is right for a renaissance of horticulture. Designed plant communities...need plant lovers who understand that we don't need to go to a national park to have a spiritual experience of nature; we can have such experiences in our backyards, parks, and rooftops.
If it is true that the next renaissance of human culture will be the reconstruction of the natural world in our cities and suburbs, then it will be the designers, not the politicians, who will lead this revolution. And plants will be at the center of it all."
The last paragraphs are lovely though and apply to anyone who loves green space, wherever it can be found:
"The time is right for a renaissance of horticulture. Designed plant communities...need plant lovers who understand that we don't need to go to a national park to have a spiritual experience of nature; we can have such experiences in our backyards, parks, and rooftops.
If it is true that the next renaissance of human culture will be the reconstruction of the natural world in our cities and suburbs, then it will be the designers, not the politicians, who will lead this revolution. And plants will be at the center of it all."
December 30, 2016
Revolutionary concept! The book is very well written with excellent pictures and illustrations, without a single word wasted. Thank you, Thomas and Claudia, for the ground breaking work, that brings ideas and practical actionable methods to create an ecological, resilient, naturalistic, harmonious and aesthetic pleasing planting style that I have always been wishing for.
February 18, 2021
I bought this book after hearing the author speak several years back. Ever since then I’ve tried (with only modest success) to use plants instead of mulch to cover the ground. The book includes some interesting design advice. Although much of it seems geared to professional designers, a savvy home gardener could definitely absorb most points. (Not me 😉) The archetype section was especially helpful and there were good tips on building layers. While designing resilient plant communities is the stated goal, using native plants was not as stressed as much as West did at her talk. To me, truly sustainable landscaping includes supporting birds, amphibians, insects, etc. The gardens photographed were wonderful.
September 27, 2018
This book eloquently picks up on a number of trends in landscape design that have been gaining steam over the past few years, directed towards more resilient and enduring place-making. I appreciate the authors’ open framework which takes a more wholistic and creative approach to planting design and breaks free from the puritanical exclusively native camp instead foregrounding community and system thinking.
I’d be interested in an exploration of additional archtypes, while grasslands, woodlands and forests cover many typologies, there are certainly more left on the table.
It’s Interesting to read the other reviews. While I agree it is largely directed towards design professionals I think in many ways individual hobbyists are better positioned to follow the recommendations of the authors, particularly in the creating and managing section of the book.
All in all a good resources and with while ready for anyone interested in landscape design and/or gardening.
I’d be interested in an exploration of additional archtypes, while grasslands, woodlands and forests cover many typologies, there are certainly more left on the table.
It’s Interesting to read the other reviews. While I agree it is largely directed towards design professionals I think in many ways individual hobbyists are better positioned to follow the recommendations of the authors, particularly in the creating and managing section of the book.
All in all a good resources and with while ready for anyone interested in landscape design and/or gardening.
September 1, 2021
Beautiful book, interesting and exciting concepts - but a bit shaky on who it is written for. This book is more about a concept, a philosophy of landscape design if you will, than a 'how to book' - which is fine! - but there's information that is rather basic for your landscape architect or professional landscape designer, but too dense - and mostly at too large a scale - for even your more enthusiastic amateur home gardener. (I would LOVE to see a version of this book targeting the latter group - and with the growing interest in more natural landscapes, particularly at the suburban level, I think it would do quite well.) Nonetheless, really excellent information and a recommended read for all interested parties. 3.5 stars.
March 25, 2017
This book takes a look at landscaping as an art form with a focus on sustainability. It emphasizes planting the community and not each individual plant. While I agree with most of the concepts in this book, I can't agree that aggressive exotics fit into their overall concept. The authors do suggest using native plants in many instances, but more from an aesthetic point of view. I think it would enhance their ideas to describe why natives are important, not leave it at how pretty they are in the right setting. Most of the practices in this book would be best suited for larger tracts of land, but I do think the average homeowner can apply some of the same concepts to their own yard.
July 28, 2017
This had a lot of information and plenty of beautiful pictures. My biggest issue was that they nearly always (but not consistently) reference plants by their scientific names. I understand why, but unfortunately it makes the book a little less accessible to the lay reader like myself who only knows a handful of scientific names. It definitely slowed down my reading and made it harder to connect with the specific plants that were mentioned. I don't think it would have been hard to use both common and scientific terms in the text and would have made it much easier to read.
October 21, 2018
This is a pretty technical book, targeted at the professional gardener. That said, it contains a lot of information about design, planting and maintenance of semi-wild spaces. If you're wondering why your prairie meadow looks bad or seems to require a lot of maintenance even though you're doing exactly what other people told you to do, this book will tell you how to fix it but perhaps not in the way you expect. Be prepared to have your assumptions about natural landscapes challenged.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews