Product Description

This book is nothing short of revolutionary. 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.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35370 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 284 pages

Review
“. . . gives plants room to flourish. . . the new book is packed with [Lauren Springer Ogden’s] lush photographs. . . .” (Susan Clotfelter Denver Post )

“The book pushes toward the sensual and involved part of gardening, toward pleasure and intimacy. Gardens ought to be places of change: hourly, daily, seasonally and over the years. It’s heartening to see a great big glossy design book championing our urges to get out and touch our plants.” (San Francisco Chronicle )

“[In] their fascinating book… the Ogdens explore how a garden can engage the senses, and seduce and enchant one with a sense of arrival and discovery.  Through it all, they aim to help gardeners create gardens that play to their plant’s strengths.”

(Hartford Courant )

"The must-have (old school) garden book of the season."
(New York Times Book Review )

“A powerful argument for letting the plants lead the design.... Don’t try to digest this book all at once. It is meant to be dipped into, savored, consulted for advice and lived with, like an old friend.” (New York Times )

“This could be one of the best garden books of the first decade of the 21st century. Combining an ecological approach to plant selection with a strong sense of the aesthetic possibilities of plants, it adds an element that is all too rarely considered—that of how plant and gardens fit into and complement their surrounding landscape, and celebrate regional distinctiveness.” (Gardens Illustrated )

"No matter what part of the country you (or the gardener on your gift list) may call home, this book is sure to offer plenty of inspiration.” (Albany Democrat-Herald )

“An excellent book to add to your library…great advice for gardeners of all levels.”

(Greenwich Time )

“Plant-Driven Design champions the “plant-it-instead-of-pave-it” point of view better than any book to date.”

(American Gardener )

“The first chapter sets out to secure a thought process that puts plants first in any approach to design. It then flows effortlessly into a gallery of gardens and plant portraits interspersed with useful listings of plants for every situation…a great source of inspiration for anyone serious about designing a garden.” (The English Garden )

"A treasure trove of photographs and ideas for ecological and glorious home landscaping."

(Evansville Courier and Press )

"What the opinionated authors think doesn’t work is described as fully as what they like, and they don’t pull punches. … [T]he strong point of view makes the book a better read than most of its coffee-table-worthy brethren."

(Landscape Architecture )

About the Author
Scott Ogden has prospected for new, garden-adaptable bulbs as well as proven, heirloom varieties in Texas (his home state), the South, Mexico, and beyond. As a horticulturist and designer he consults for and creates public and private gardens across the country. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Garden designers Scott Ogden and Lauren Springer Ogden lecture internationally, emphasizing plant diversity and ecological attunement. Their rich plant palette draws its inspiration from their studies of plants in the wild in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Europe, and South Africa. They have spoken at most major botanic gardens, public gardens, and arboreta in the United States.

This husband-and-wife team's horticultural experience spans USDA zones 4-10. They have designed gardens and/or gardened professionally in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming as well as England, Ireland, and Austria. Public projects include gardens at Naples Botanical Garden, Denver Botanic Gardens, Callaway Gardens, and San Antonio Botanical Gardens.

Scott and Lauren have written several books in which they pioneer new plants and garden aesthetics. Their latest book, Plant-Driven Design, takes a bold look at garden design from a plant perspective, marrying site, region, plants, and people while both embracing and transcending regionality. Other books include Garden Bulbs for the South (Timber Press 2007), Passionate Gardening (Fulcrum Publishing 2000), The Moonlit Garden (Taylor Publishing 1998), The Undaunted Garden (Fulcrum Publishing 1994), Waterwise Gardening (PrenticeHall 1994), and Gardening Success With Difficult Soils (Taylor Publishing 1992.)

The Ogdens and their work have been featured on several television shows and in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Nature, Martha Stewart Living, Sunset, and Horticulture. Awards include two American Horticultural Society book awards and a landscape design award from the Association of Professional Landscape Designers.

Before making horticulture and garden design their life's work, Scott studied geology and paleontology at Yale, and Lauren studied Spanish and Latin American literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She also received a master's degree in horticulture from Penn State. Passionate gardeners, propagators, plant hunters, fossil hounds, and photographers, Scott and Lauren split their time between a small, jam-packed urban garden in Austin and an expansive naturalistic garden in Fort Collins. They have 5 children, and grow well over 3,000 species and selections of plants.

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Customer Reviews

Sumptuous book breaks new ground in garden design
This is not just Another Pretty Garden Book, although it is chockablock full of stunning images. Unlike cookie cutter coffee table books with the same plants and same rehashed notions, the Ogdens have filled the text with clear, compelling exposition that really elucidates the ways in to take advantage of the inherent ecological needs of plants to achieve stunning aesthetic ends. This book is utterly new and novel. Everyone talks about design, but the Ogdens deliver the goods: their stellar photography captures the most beautiful North American gardens and crystallizes their salient aspects (microclimate, hardscape, texture and light) showing you how you can recreate many of these artistic habitats in an urban or suburban setting. They have distilled two lifetimes of cutting edge gardening into their copious plant lists and designs--the best new plants used in fresh ways. These speak to all parts of our continent. I am especially excited by the sections on transforming dull lawn space into multidimensional, self sustaining meadows filled with year around color, attracting wildlife and safe for humans! Encyclopaedic in scope, intimate in feel, this is a handbook for creating sustainable, gorgeous, truly American gardens. Every serious gardener, designer or landscape architect in America should own and cherish this book.

my thoughts as I read this book: plusses and minuses
On the plus side, the photos are undeniably beautiful. They have taken care to select the right time of day, the right angle, and the right exposure to really maximize the beauty of the gardens and plants. The paper and printing process enhances their beauty. Many, but not all, of the photos are from their own garden (I don't know how large their space is, but it is obviously larger than my own, and has a natural backdrop that my suburban home could never replicate). I have already learned a few lessons about garden design (daffodils point southeast, so plant them so they'll turn toward the viewing area, for instance).

On the negative side, I am on page 51, and have been struck already with how -- for lack of a better word -- catty they are about other designers and gardens. I am happy to read their ideas for what makes a garden beautiful, but I can do without their references to, for instance, a native plant garden director "piously" sharing her opinions with them (which they obviously didn't share) or statements like "[i]nsensitivity to this plant's spirit is exemplified by a planting along the south side of an east-west path at a prominent botanic garden". I am hoping this attitude will settle down as I progress through the book. It's very jarring to be reading their peaceful, nature-driven, perhaps even dare I say, "hippy-like" writing, and then have them suddenly stop to take a swipe at another designer or garden or gardening theory. Doing that exhibits the same arrogance for which they denigrate others.

I'll update as I continue through the book.

Connecting plants and people through art, science and philosphy
Gardening books tend to be easily classified - detailed reference books, encyclopedic treatises on individual plants, design how-to, or regionally-specific. Plant Driven Design transcends time, geographic boundaries and spirit. It is a book that evokes thoughtful consideration and compassion for our own backyards and a greater connection with the world at the same time.
Readers will not want to sit and read this all at one time - it's a book to return to again and again. The abundance of beautiful photographs and detailed, honest prose provide repose for stressed minds, offer inspiration for new garden concepts, encourage exploration of the natural world, and grant freedom to experience plants as the basis for all garden processes.
On the other hand, Plant Driven Design offers some of the most diverse and creative plant lists ever incorporated into a single gardening book, with hundreds of suggestions of a vast array of species and cultivars for a myriad of sites and conditions. I was especially intrigued with lists of Junipers to Love, Bulbs for Steppe Plantings, Designing with Light, and Matching Climates and Plants.
Gardeners of all flavors will appreciate the depth and breadth that these intelligent and creative gardeners bring forth - science, art, philosophy, travel, romance and nature woven purposefully throughout the pages. This is a book that will change the way you experience gardens forever.

Favorite quote:
In the chapter, Putting Plants First: "The earthly Edens we create are indeed poetic realms in which we are able to forget our modern-day divorce from the natural world. This renewal of our relationship with nature is the very essence of garden experience."