Product Description

Home gardeners with a keen interest in design, as well as professional landscape designers, will find invaluable advice in this new approach. The book focuses on the general principles behind creating successful and beautiful plant combinations in both time and space-working with perennials in the context of trees, shrubs, and the surrounding landscape. The authors suggest looking across, into, and through the landscape. They ask the reader to consider the rhythms and connections in their designs, through such elements as echoes, linkages, and repetitions. More than just theory, Planting Design includes practical discussion of topics such as soil preparation, plant selection, and garden maintenance. Exceptional photographs show growth of a designed landscape over time, opening the gardener to new ways of seeing and thinking about their landscapes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #142831 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-01
• Released on: 2005-10-15
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 176 pages

From Booklist
Oudolf's reputation as an innovative plantsman and designer looms large in the world of horticulture, just as Kingsbury stands out for his unambiguous call to integrate vibrant, naturalistic plantings in contemporary spaces. Artistry and down-to-earth practicality come together in their latest effort as they once again focus on perennial plants. Covering small personal gardens as well as parkland in urban centers--Chicago's Millennium Park appears to exemplify Oudolf's way of putting plants on display--the authors discuss ecological issues and how plants, whether native species or cultivars, should fit the specific environment. Swaths of flowering specimens and grasses come to the fore in entrancing photographs, illustrating the expressive nature--and notion--of a strong framework that relies on hardscape elements in tandem with the plants themselves. Their vision challenges certain aspects of conventional landscape architecture and garden design, yet gardeners interested in creating distinct spaces that encompass the beauty of the shifting seasons will welcome the book's intriguing concepts and expert advice. Alice Joyce
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Publisher
Teaches gardeners how to design beautiful naturalistic gardens that can adapt to the changing needs of perennials, trees, shrubs and the changing landscape. Exceptional illustrations use superimposed images to show growth of a designed landscape over time. Includes lists of cutting edge yet proven garden plants.

About the Author
Piet Oudolf ... the Dutch master of perennials. Piet Oudolf is a native of Holland and originally studied to be an architect. Instead of designing buildings he became the founder of New Wave planting, a movement which takes inspiration from nature but employs artistic skill in creating planting schemes. As a plantsman, his aim is to emphasize the form, texture, and natural harmony of plants, and as a skilled plant breeder, he creates new varieties for these and other specific design purposes. His style is the result of the influence of various horticultural traditions such as the combination of Dutch formality and naturalistic planting styles. Oudolf has designed gardens in Holland and Germany, and a public park in Sweden. In the UK , he has created a much-publicized garden in Hampshire and is about to embark on a wildlife park in Norfolk. His own garden and nursery, opened with his wife in 1982 near Arnhem, Holland, has become world-famous. It has appeared in magazines such as Gardens Illustrated, House and Garden, The Independent, Perspectives, and Maire Claire Maison. Oudolf is also the subject of a chapter in Page Dickey's book, Breaking Ground, which profiles ten of the world's foremost contemporary garden designers. He collaborated with garden designer Arne Maynard to create the garden showpiece "'Evolution"', which was awarded the illustrious Best in Show and a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show 2000. Oudolf also partnered in 2000 with Kathryn Gustafson's design team from Seattle, WA to win the design competition for the monumental Millenium Garden, the new focal point for the heart of Chicago.

Noel Kingsbury is well known as a writer on plants and gardens. He has always been firmly in the vanguard of new developments, in particular playing a major role in popularizing a more naturalistic and sustainable planting style, with The New Perennial Garden (Frances Lincoln 1996). With designer Piet Oudolf he wrote Designing with Plants (Timber Press 2000). He is associated with the Landscape Department at the University of Sheffield, as part of his active involvement in promoting quality planting in public spaces.

Customer Reviews

A great attempt with an emphasis on the horticultural aspect of Planting Design
There are three main factors to consider in Planting Design: aesthetics, horticulture, and symbolism of plants.

"Gardeners and garden designers seek inspiration from a variety of sources. Among these, nature is perhaps a relative recent choice, a reflection of changing attitudes toward natural world..." Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury wrote. They continued to cover nature and gardens (use of plants with wild character, nature-inspired planting pattern, use of native species, avoiding formality, biodiversity, etc), ecology and habitat (ecological fit, visual ecology, etc), planting in space, plants on display, the mechanics of planting design, planting in time, and practicalities (soil preparation, plant selection, etc) and maintenance.

Planting Design is the most important aspect of landscape education and practice. It is also a subject that is very difficult to teach or to learn. "Planting Design: Gardens in Time and Space" can alleviate this problem. We need people to do research on Planting Design from different angles. Piet Oudolf is an innovative designer, horticulturist and plantsman, and Noel Kingsbury is an advocate of naturalistic planting. "Planting Design: Gardens in Time and Space" is a result of their cooperation. It has 176 pages and many spectacular color interior photos. It is a great attempt with an emphasis on the horticultural aspect of Planting Design.

Gang Chen, Author of "LEED AP Exam Guide" & "Planting Design Illustrated." LEED AP, AIA

In defense of a misunderstood book
As an admirer of Noel Kingsbury's prolific work, I was initially put off by this book. In some passages, it reads like a manifesto on a new approach to gardening. On futher reading, however, I have found it stimulating, valuable, and full of hard-to-find information on cutting edge work in ornamental gardening, particularly in Europe. Its emphasis on design of plantings for reduced maintenance in parks and public areas is not at all off point for the home gardener - certainly for this home gardener. I am 61, have only weekends for gardening, weekends often interrupted by other of life's demands, I garden on a difficult site with heavy wet clay and lots of deer. So any gardening approach that holds out a way to have a beautiful, sustainable garden, using plants suited to existing conditions, that I can create and maintain with minimal effort and time is certainly of value. Moreover, Kingsbury introduces me to some exciting names in gardening and to exciting gardens I've not known of: the work of Cassian Schmidt at Hermanshoff in Germany is only one example. This book is a window into a world of planting design and gardening that most of us have no access to (much of the published literature is in German) and Kingsbury brings it to light. I heartily recommend this book. It is a serious book, and gives more and more on successive readings. If your time is limited, you can reread sections that interest you and find more of value each time. I'm not sure what part Piet Oudolf actually played in this book, but he's certainly the preeminent practitioner of this style, and his apparently loose association with Kingsbury should continue. They are doing exciting work, and this book puts their work into a larger context and gives it a theoretical framework.

Disappointed, incredibly disappointed.
I would describe myself as a fan of Oudolf - by adopting and adapting some of his raison-être our own garden has changed beyond recognition, with masses of seasonal interest throughout the year. Kingsbury ghosted Oudolf's original work, Designing with Plants with some aplomb, Henk Gerritsen's turn of phrase in Dream Plants and More Dream Plants was always light, witty and insightful and while Gardening with Grasses seemed to bow to certain conventionalities, for European readers, the book opened up new vistas of possibilities. But with this offering the writers have run out of steam, or rather Kingsbury has as Oudolf appears to have participated little in the book's creation. This time Kingsbury's style is leaden - is the book a re-working of his recent thesis? It stinks of academia. Timber Press has done an excellent job re the images on the hard and dust cover (and this time all the pages are in the right order and the captions are all in English - not the case with my copies of previous work attributed to Oudolf that they have published). But as publishers they mislead in their suggestion that in this book `home gardeners ... will find invaluable advice in this new approach'. First of all the approach is not new, secondly the style is so leaden most would start to doze while reading it and thirdly not all home gardeners have the opportunity for creating public amenities for their community. For professionals the book may be of use but, as another reviewer has suggested, the narrative raises more questions than it answers, and the lists are short and somewhat mean.
Next time Oudolf's name appears on the cover of a new book I will wait until I get my hands on a copy so see what, if anything, is new and inspirational. In the meanwhile I will continue to use my dog-eared copies of previous work attributed to him which are well worth purchasing.