Plant-Driven Design: Creating Gardens That Honor Plants, Place, and Spirit

For too long, garden design has given pride of place to architecture, artifice, and arbitrary principles. The results? Soulless landscapes where plants play subordinate roles.

With passion and eloquence, Scott Ogden and Lauren Springer Ogden argue that only when plants are given the respect they deserve does a garden become emotionally resonant. Plant-Driven Design shows designers how to work more confidently with plants, and gives gardeners more confidence to design. The Ogdens boldly challenge design orthodoxy and current trends by examining how to marry plantsmanship and design without sacrificing one to the other.

Supported by extensive lists of plants adapted to specific purposes and sites, Plant-Driven Design explores how plants interact with place. In addition, the authors' experience gardening and designing in a wide variety of climates gives their perspective a unique depth. In ideas, scope, and detail, this book both embraces and transcends regionality. By reclaiming gardens as a home to plants, this groundbreaking work will restore life-affirming vitality to garden design and profoundly affect how we understand and experience gardens.

A revolutionary approach to garden design puts plants at the center of a landscape, rather than hardscape features, demonstrating how to work more effectively and confidently with different kinds of plants, explaining how to integrate plantsmanship and design, and furnishing extensive lists of plants suitable for specific purposes and sites.

Putting plants first: a different approach to designing gardens — Plants with presence: choosing and creating spaces for a plant's needs and character — Plants as heroes: garden challenges and opportunities — Patterns, placement, and process: how plants make gardens into Edens — Connecting: creating gardens that embrace people, places, and the natural world — Plants honored: A gallery of gardens in the spirit of plant-driven design.