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Wild: The Naturalistic Garden
'This extraordinarily useful compendium should be required reading for anyone aspiring to ... a gorgeous garden.' –
New York Times Book Review
A stunning exploration of one of the hottest trends in garden design, nature-based planting with an eco-aware approach, featuring the work of leading designers such as Sean Hogan, Piet Oudolf, and Dan Pearson
Forget the mild, manicured gardens of the past: planting today is undergoing a revolution in taste and aesthetics. This is the first comprehensive overview of a new planting approach that is wild and natural by nature, reflecting the global turn towards sustainability and the current zeitgeist in garden design. Featuring over 40 gardens - from a perennial meadow in East Sussex, England to a private, drought-resistant garden in Australia - each garden in this stunning book is brought to life with beautiful photography and insightful text.
A stunning exploration of one of the hottest trends in garden design, nature-based planting with an eco-aware approach, featuring the work of leading designers such as Sean Hogan, Piet Oudolf, and Dan Pearson
Forget the mild, manicured gardens of the past: planting today is undergoing a revolution in taste and aesthetics. This is the first comprehensive overview of a new planting approach that is wild and natural by nature, reflecting the global turn towards sustainability and the current zeitgeist in garden design. Featuring over 40 gardens - from a perennial meadow in East Sussex, England to a private, drought-resistant garden in Australia - each garden in this stunning book is brought to life with beautiful photography and insightful text.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published March 9, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 20, 2025
What a stunning book. Especially the photographs by Claire Takacs. They really make the book. To me, the text is quite secondary. I can only imagine how many very early mornings Claire has spent, waiting for those first rays of sunshine. And then, of course, the sun doesn’t always shine. And when it does....in the middle of the day....it’s too bright and there is too much contrast to get the sort of photographs that she exhibits here. She truly is a master of garden photography. I found myself looking at some of the photos ...say that on p121 of some grasses and wondering how my photo might have turned out if I was the one taking the shot. I think the answer is that my shot would not be suitable for publication whilst hers is an artwork.
Noel Kingsbury, still tells quite a good story about the relatively recent interest I Naturalistic plantings and the role of many of the landscape artists in this movement. I didn’t realise that most of the developments in this field have occurred since 1970’s. I was certainly bewitched by the works of Piet Oudolf and some of his publications. And, I was delighted to see Oduolf’s Field featuring in this book.......along with some of his philosophy. For example, a plant needs to look good (or striking or exhibit strong form) even when dead with naturalistic plantings.
I was also interested to learn that Sometimes these creations are remarkably like what might be seen locally in open countryside; at other times they are more like a conventional garden that has somehow overflowed its boundaries and spread an exuberant but definitely designed and styled plant mix over what in the past might have been staid mown lawn. So there seems to still the element of design superimposed on all the exuberance of wildness.
Most of the book is dedicated to vignettes on various individial gardens....some large and in the country; some small and in urban locations ....some dry gardens and some (such as the garden in Hokkaido), in a forest. I loved most of them though confess, I’m less attracted to the wild city gardens than those with a fantastic landscape as a natural setting.
I’ve extracted some on Kingsbury’s words below....partly to try and capture the essence of what this movement is about. But partly to help me remember it. I really liked the book. Five stars from me.
Planting - the way plants are used and arranged - is changing. Private gardens, public parks and other public spaces, even some corporate landscapes are increasingly sporting wildflower meadows, prairie plantings, or perennials and ornamental grasses in great naturalistic sweeps. Sometimes these creations are remarkably like what might be seen locally in open countryside; at other times they are more like a conventional garden that has somehow overflowed its boundaries and spread an exuberant but definitely designed and styled plant mix over what in the past might have been staid mown lawn.
There is none of the regular spacing of conventional planting, and usually little bare earth to be seen between plants; if there are any straight lines they are there to contrast with and thus emphasize the romantic softness of the vegetation.
In Europe, urban naturalism is exemplified by the heemparken ('home/habitat parks) of The Netherlands - public parks that use Dutch native plants in a naturalistic way. The beempare concept is one of the oldest in the world of nature-inspired planting, dating back to the 193os and the life of Jacobus P. Thijsse, a teacher turned early environmental campaigner, and founder, in 1905, of the Society for the Preservation of Nature Monuments in the Netherlands.
In the Amsterdam suburb of Amstelveen, three areas - the Dr Jac.P. Thijssepark, De Braak and the Dr Koos Landwehrpark - are a hybrid of nature and cultivation. The particular process of maintenance employed here is crucial to their visual and ecological diversity and to their popularity with the public. Much of the parks is managed on a cyclical basis, so that every ten years or so the heather-dominated vegetation, which tends to suppress all smaller plants, is stripped off, and the bare peat sown with seed of the kind of wildflowers that typically grow on newly exposed surfaces. Over the next few years, other species move in and overshadow them, and the process continues until the heathers succeed in another complete take-over.
Biodiversity is one of the drivers behind the new planting - prompted by the feeling shared by many people that humanity, having destroyed so many natural environments in the making of its own, has an obligation to repair some of the damage. More convincing than moral obligation for many people, however, is the sense of sheer joy engendered by the sight and sounds of wild nature in the city.
Plant use in gardens has traditionally been very directed, precise and controlling. Such planting reached its peak in the nineteenth century, when an explosion of gardening interest in the newly industrializing countries of Europe, North America and, indeed, anywhere that was subject to the impact of Western-defined modernity, resulted in a planting style that emphasized the vibrantly colourful, the geometrically ordered and the completely human-orientated set of aesthetic values.
During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, ethical concerns have risen in volume, and sustainability has come to dominate the agenda.
To the need to reduce irreplaceable inputs (water and fertilizer) and harmful outputs (pesticides, waste plastics) has been added another powerful argument, that of carbon capture and storage.
Central to what we should perhaps call the New Planting, in contrast, is the desire - or perhaps, more appropriately, a recognition of the necessity - to choose plants that suit the existing conditions.
This is based on the realization that however difficult the situation (within reason), nature has a beautiful wild plant flora for that environment.
The New Planting aims to root its creations in the environmental reality of California, New Zealand, Brazil or wherever the practitioner is, rather than trying to recreate some romantic northern European ideal......As the New Planting moves from its largely northern European point of origin it has to face the challenge of public acceptance: will people like it enough in the local park, would they have it in their gardens?..... What we are seeing in naturalistic planting is a new way of looking at plants. Piet Oudolf's photography of his own work made us look at seed heads, dying foliage and autumn decay in a new way, and influenced the work of a number of professional garden photographers, in particular the Dutch painter and photographer Marijke Heuff.
Thinking about planting on a gradient from the more 'cultural' to the more 'natural' is a good way of focusing attention on a range of issues: the combination of plants, the types of plants chosen, the role of other garden elements, such as hard landscaping or hedging, and, crucially, how much maintenance intervenes to manage the inevitable changes that happen as plants grow, seed, spread and die.
Nothing much more happened until the 1970s, when two developments began to disrupt the ordered world of the garden border. One was essentially about habitat creation, the making of wildflower meadows in western and central Europe and prairies in the United States. Some people, very often with a background in the relatively young science of plant ecology, set about creating habitats modelled on natural ones, as part of a movement more concerned with nature conservation than with garden-making or landscape design. Nevertheless, the latter two fields rapidly began to benefit, as more and more people appreciated the wild beauty of these re-created habitats and the wildlife they attracted. Meadows and prairies were, in some ways, easy to sell, with a wide range of colourful species when in full flower; both also have strong romantic associations.
However, their period of glory can be short, that of meadows especially...... The other development that took place in the 1970s began from another direction: the softening and blurring of what had once been the rigid certainties of conventional garden-making.
As the earlier habitat recreations began to mature, other more sophisticated and aesthetically-driven versions began to appear. Some adventurous practitioners began to explore the middle ground between habitat creation and the merely aesthetically naturalistic, notably James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett, who have tried creating plant mixes that have genuine ecological dynamism but who are not focused on working with regional natives.
Indeed, these two researchers have firmly set themselves against the 'natives-only' movement, arguing that this limits their ability to create plantings with what Hitchmough calls 'the wow factor, necessary if they are to be accepted by the public.
Successful plantings appeal to our visual senses for the same reasons that natural environments such as wildflower meadows appeal to us, so it makes sense to try to understand their visual qualities together. How does naturalistic and ecological planting work visually, and why is it beautiful?....When we look at wild vegetation or its human-created cousin and see it as attractive, it is often because it combines two apparently contradictory aspects: complexity and simplicity. Frequently, there are few visually prominent elements, hence the simplicity, but they are distributed in a way that is very complex - there is no pattern or predictability, but instead a semi-randomized distribution.
There is a frequently quoted design slogan, 'less is more', which helps to explain why an effective planting is often one that has only a few visually prominent elements. Here, the constantly changing distribution of a few elements provides interest - its lack of predictability engages our attention, even if only subconsciously.
Among these limited elements, grasses reign supreme - often literally, as they have a flexible strength that enables them to survive autumnal storms and stand tall, while the softer perennials around them collapse.
It follows, then, that attractive, nature-inspired planting involves a lot of repetition and a limited number of elements, which may be prominent because of their colour or their structure, and which give the entire scene a visual unity and coherence.
There is another level of complexity that also engages. At first sight
of a naturalistic planting, we appreciate just a few elements - but when we look more closely, and there are plant species we did not see at first, along with, quite possibly, patterns and distributions that operate on a more local level. A wildflower meadow or prairie is the best place to appreciate this impact on our eyes and minds, as close inspection reveals a myriad species, offering the onlooker a constantly shifting mix of plants as they walk.
Plants have evolved into many different forms, and it is these that we are looking at when we cast our eyes over vegetation. Strong forms, such as upright flower spikes or dramatic foliage, seize our attention. Their absence can render even a rich and diverse vegetation dull, but too many can be over-stimulating and make the whole seem too busy and fussy. Those who have waterside areas to plant have to be particularly careful in this respect, As we become accustomed to looking at wild plant habitats as well as gardens, we can begin to judge the latter on the basis of how effectively they evoke nature. Of course, opinions will differ greatly on how much a given garden really resembles a natural habitat. It must be said, however, that some of the most effective and popular nature-inspired plantings are those that offer some sort of idealized nature. The reality is that however beautiful a wild habitat may be, there will always be extensive areas that are dull and uninteresting, especially to the non-expert. Good planting minimizes this. It concentrates those aspects of the wild that we find stimulating, bringing together forms, textures and colours that spark off each other.
There must also be a quiet background, however, and it is this that perhaps distinguishes some of the most effective nature-inspired planting from its traditional forebears.
Simplicity and complexity, visual prominence and understatement - it seems as if nature-inspired planting is dealing in paradoxes. Perhaps this underlying creative tension is a major part of its appeal.
A plant is only worth growing if it looks good when it's dead." So says the garden designer Piet Oudolf, who has done more than anyone else to raise the profile of planting design in general and nature-inspired planting in particular.
The comment was made as a joke, but it illustrates one of the reasons Oudolf's work has become so successful: he uses plants that have presence and character for months after their main flowering season is over...... The considerable number of plant species and cultivars used in the Durslade planting - around 100 - is typical for an Oudolf project of this scale. This is far more than most designers use, and the immediate reaction may be that it goes against that well-established design slogan, 'less is more.
Noel Kingsbury, still tells quite a good story about the relatively recent interest I Naturalistic plantings and the role of many of the landscape artists in this movement. I didn’t realise that most of the developments in this field have occurred since 1970’s. I was certainly bewitched by the works of Piet Oudolf and some of his publications. And, I was delighted to see Oduolf’s Field featuring in this book.......along with some of his philosophy. For example, a plant needs to look good (or striking or exhibit strong form) even when dead with naturalistic plantings.
I was also interested to learn that Sometimes these creations are remarkably like what might be seen locally in open countryside; at other times they are more like a conventional garden that has somehow overflowed its boundaries and spread an exuberant but definitely designed and styled plant mix over what in the past might have been staid mown lawn. So there seems to still the element of design superimposed on all the exuberance of wildness.
Most of the book is dedicated to vignettes on various individial gardens....some large and in the country; some small and in urban locations ....some dry gardens and some (such as the garden in Hokkaido), in a forest. I loved most of them though confess, I’m less attracted to the wild city gardens than those with a fantastic landscape as a natural setting.
I’ve extracted some on Kingsbury’s words below....partly to try and capture the essence of what this movement is about. But partly to help me remember it. I really liked the book. Five stars from me.
Planting - the way plants are used and arranged - is changing. Private gardens, public parks and other public spaces, even some corporate landscapes are increasingly sporting wildflower meadows, prairie plantings, or perennials and ornamental grasses in great naturalistic sweeps. Sometimes these creations are remarkably like what might be seen locally in open countryside; at other times they are more like a conventional garden that has somehow overflowed its boundaries and spread an exuberant but definitely designed and styled plant mix over what in the past might have been staid mown lawn.
There is none of the regular spacing of conventional planting, and usually little bare earth to be seen between plants; if there are any straight lines they are there to contrast with and thus emphasize the romantic softness of the vegetation.
In Europe, urban naturalism is exemplified by the heemparken ('home/habitat parks) of The Netherlands - public parks that use Dutch native plants in a naturalistic way. The beempare concept is one of the oldest in the world of nature-inspired planting, dating back to the 193os and the life of Jacobus P. Thijsse, a teacher turned early environmental campaigner, and founder, in 1905, of the Society for the Preservation of Nature Monuments in the Netherlands.
In the Amsterdam suburb of Amstelveen, three areas - the Dr Jac.P. Thijssepark, De Braak and the Dr Koos Landwehrpark - are a hybrid of nature and cultivation. The particular process of maintenance employed here is crucial to their visual and ecological diversity and to their popularity with the public. Much of the parks is managed on a cyclical basis, so that every ten years or so the heather-dominated vegetation, which tends to suppress all smaller plants, is stripped off, and the bare peat sown with seed of the kind of wildflowers that typically grow on newly exposed surfaces. Over the next few years, other species move in and overshadow them, and the process continues until the heathers succeed in another complete take-over.
Biodiversity is one of the drivers behind the new planting - prompted by the feeling shared by many people that humanity, having destroyed so many natural environments in the making of its own, has an obligation to repair some of the damage. More convincing than moral obligation for many people, however, is the sense of sheer joy engendered by the sight and sounds of wild nature in the city.
Plant use in gardens has traditionally been very directed, precise and controlling. Such planting reached its peak in the nineteenth century, when an explosion of gardening interest in the newly industrializing countries of Europe, North America and, indeed, anywhere that was subject to the impact of Western-defined modernity, resulted in a planting style that emphasized the vibrantly colourful, the geometrically ordered and the completely human-orientated set of aesthetic values.
During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, ethical concerns have risen in volume, and sustainability has come to dominate the agenda.
To the need to reduce irreplaceable inputs (water and fertilizer) and harmful outputs (pesticides, waste plastics) has been added another powerful argument, that of carbon capture and storage.
Central to what we should perhaps call the New Planting, in contrast, is the desire - or perhaps, more appropriately, a recognition of the necessity - to choose plants that suit the existing conditions.
This is based on the realization that however difficult the situation (within reason), nature has a beautiful wild plant flora for that environment.
The New Planting aims to root its creations in the environmental reality of California, New Zealand, Brazil or wherever the practitioner is, rather than trying to recreate some romantic northern European ideal......As the New Planting moves from its largely northern European point of origin it has to face the challenge of public acceptance: will people like it enough in the local park, would they have it in their gardens?..... What we are seeing in naturalistic planting is a new way of looking at plants. Piet Oudolf's photography of his own work made us look at seed heads, dying foliage and autumn decay in a new way, and influenced the work of a number of professional garden photographers, in particular the Dutch painter and photographer Marijke Heuff.
Thinking about planting on a gradient from the more 'cultural' to the more 'natural' is a good way of focusing attention on a range of issues: the combination of plants, the types of plants chosen, the role of other garden elements, such as hard landscaping or hedging, and, crucially, how much maintenance intervenes to manage the inevitable changes that happen as plants grow, seed, spread and die.
Nothing much more happened until the 1970s, when two developments began to disrupt the ordered world of the garden border. One was essentially about habitat creation, the making of wildflower meadows in western and central Europe and prairies in the United States. Some people, very often with a background in the relatively young science of plant ecology, set about creating habitats modelled on natural ones, as part of a movement more concerned with nature conservation than with garden-making or landscape design. Nevertheless, the latter two fields rapidly began to benefit, as more and more people appreciated the wild beauty of these re-created habitats and the wildlife they attracted. Meadows and prairies were, in some ways, easy to sell, with a wide range of colourful species when in full flower; both also have strong romantic associations.
However, their period of glory can be short, that of meadows especially...... The other development that took place in the 1970s began from another direction: the softening and blurring of what had once been the rigid certainties of conventional garden-making.
As the earlier habitat recreations began to mature, other more sophisticated and aesthetically-driven versions began to appear. Some adventurous practitioners began to explore the middle ground between habitat creation and the merely aesthetically naturalistic, notably James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett, who have tried creating plant mixes that have genuine ecological dynamism but who are not focused on working with regional natives.
Indeed, these two researchers have firmly set themselves against the 'natives-only' movement, arguing that this limits their ability to create plantings with what Hitchmough calls 'the wow factor, necessary if they are to be accepted by the public.
Successful plantings appeal to our visual senses for the same reasons that natural environments such as wildflower meadows appeal to us, so it makes sense to try to understand their visual qualities together. How does naturalistic and ecological planting work visually, and why is it beautiful?....When we look at wild vegetation or its human-created cousin and see it as attractive, it is often because it combines two apparently contradictory aspects: complexity and simplicity. Frequently, there are few visually prominent elements, hence the simplicity, but they are distributed in a way that is very complex - there is no pattern or predictability, but instead a semi-randomized distribution.
There is a frequently quoted design slogan, 'less is more', which helps to explain why an effective planting is often one that has only a few visually prominent elements. Here, the constantly changing distribution of a few elements provides interest - its lack of predictability engages our attention, even if only subconsciously.
Among these limited elements, grasses reign supreme - often literally, as they have a flexible strength that enables them to survive autumnal storms and stand tall, while the softer perennials around them collapse.
It follows, then, that attractive, nature-inspired planting involves a lot of repetition and a limited number of elements, which may be prominent because of their colour or their structure, and which give the entire scene a visual unity and coherence.
There is another level of complexity that also engages. At first sight
of a naturalistic planting, we appreciate just a few elements - but when we look more closely, and there are plant species we did not see at first, along with, quite possibly, patterns and distributions that operate on a more local level. A wildflower meadow or prairie is the best place to appreciate this impact on our eyes and minds, as close inspection reveals a myriad species, offering the onlooker a constantly shifting mix of plants as they walk.
Plants have evolved into many different forms, and it is these that we are looking at when we cast our eyes over vegetation. Strong forms, such as upright flower spikes or dramatic foliage, seize our attention. Their absence can render even a rich and diverse vegetation dull, but too many can be over-stimulating and make the whole seem too busy and fussy. Those who have waterside areas to plant have to be particularly careful in this respect, As we become accustomed to looking at wild plant habitats as well as gardens, we can begin to judge the latter on the basis of how effectively they evoke nature. Of course, opinions will differ greatly on how much a given garden really resembles a natural habitat. It must be said, however, that some of the most effective and popular nature-inspired plantings are those that offer some sort of idealized nature. The reality is that however beautiful a wild habitat may be, there will always be extensive areas that are dull and uninteresting, especially to the non-expert. Good planting minimizes this. It concentrates those aspects of the wild that we find stimulating, bringing together forms, textures and colours that spark off each other.
There must also be a quiet background, however, and it is this that perhaps distinguishes some of the most effective nature-inspired planting from its traditional forebears.
Simplicity and complexity, visual prominence and understatement - it seems as if nature-inspired planting is dealing in paradoxes. Perhaps this underlying creative tension is a major part of its appeal.
A plant is only worth growing if it looks good when it's dead." So says the garden designer Piet Oudolf, who has done more than anyone else to raise the profile of planting design in general and nature-inspired planting in particular.
The comment was made as a joke, but it illustrates one of the reasons Oudolf's work has become so successful: he uses plants that have presence and character for months after their main flowering season is over...... The considerable number of plant species and cultivars used in the Durslade planting - around 100 - is typical for an Oudolf project of this scale. This is far more than most designers use, and the immediate reaction may be that it goes against that well-established design slogan, 'less is more.
January 18, 2023
Lovely pictures, though I had other expectations from the text. I'd like a book of this sort to be either about lush photography and simplistic points, or for it to be sharper in its purpose, with picture captions that more clearly explain how they are supporting some explanation. Sure, it's a lovely book, and well worth a flip through. But it's one that's hard to justify lingering over.
January 25, 2023
There is a real wave on for having a completely "natural" looking garden. No more rows of a particular flower with a nice tidy look but one that looks crowded with definition of tall & short weedy looking plants dispersed among the ones that are blooming. This is going on all over the world and this book, beautifully photographed I might add, shows lots of gardens world-wide that are this type of landscaping. Piet Oudolf, a famous Dutch landscaper describes it best "A plant is only worth growing if it looks good when it's dead". This type of landscaping tends to look good even in a dormant garden. Oudolf designed the now famous tourist attraction in New York...The High Line. A linear public park sitting 2 stories above the ground..once a railroad line, with this type of "naturalistic gardening".
June 26, 2022
While I anticipated that the photography in this book would be very good, and it was, I had no particular expectations with regard to the text. In my experience amateur gardeners like me picking up a book such as this one focus more on the visual images than the words. Imagine my delight then when I discovered that Mr. Kingsbury’s writing proved to be not simply above average but excellent. 4.5 stars
July 19, 2022
Just sublime swoony photography and pretty interesting accompanying text … at times a touch too academic feeling for my beginner understanding ? But I felt that i wanted to do other readings to come back to this book later to appreciate it.. rating 4 stars as a reminder
October 13, 2022
A book filled with naturalistic landscapes, what’s not to like?
December 19, 2022
Absolutely beautiful book overflowing with inspiration.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews