There’s no time like the present to talk about the future.
That’s the premise for the next edition of The New Perennialist Talks with very special guest writer Nöel Kingsbury. Our goal is to consider the future of naturalistic garden design and where it might go next.
This feels like a singular opportunity to put out our collective antennae and Nöel is superbly qualified to lead off this discussion.
It feels like the right day to celebrate mothers, earthly and otherwise. After all, our roots are umbilically connected.
My mother used to love to tell this story about my early brush with the world of flowers.
One summer, when I was no more than six years old, she gave me an envelope full of marigold seeds and a few instructions on how to plant them. This being the first time in my life attempting any such thing, the task became a kind of slow-motion adventure. I dropped a few tiny seeds into a soil-filled terra cotta pot, watered it and set out the pot on the sunny stone wall outside the front door of our Toronto suburban home.
Our talk in April was a trip to the beach. Because the near mythical Swedish plantsman and designer Peter Korn is pioneering a new way of creating wildly inspired climate-tough gardens and he’s doing it all with sand.
The gardens of Peter Korn are like no other – bursting with a hyper-concentration of esoteric plant species with non-stop flowering from spring till fall. Every plant is neatly fitted to its ecological niche and microhabitat within the greater scheme. From his base at Klinta Trädgård near Malmö, Peter is setting convention on its head with gardens that defy usual practices. They’re tough, beautiful, and pure catmint for plant lovers.
I’m ecstatic to present my latest talk focused on the wilder frontiers of designed landscapes.
We delivered the talk live to an international audience of gardeners and designers in early April. If you missed it, no worries. You can now watch the recording as a Video-on-Demand on Vimeo simply by clicking this link.
I’ve been evolving and delivering versions of this talk to garden lovers over the past two years – and getting rave reviews along the way. It’s an opportunity to share my inside perspective on some of the international designers, gardens and innovations leading this growing movement. I pair this up with a look at my own experimental design projects at my cabin here in Canada.
Welcome back to the very new New Perennialist.
I’m thrilled to unveil the latest version of this blog, freshly redesigned over Summer 2021 to gear up for the next round of explorations in naturalistic planting design.
The awe-inspiring drone shot of the new Piet Oudolf-designed garden at the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany helps to set the tone.
What started out as a blog based on my outsider’s fascination with naturalistic planting design has grown over the course of nearly ten years into a useful archive of original content. I’ve been truly gratified by how it’s come to be enjoyed as a resource by like-minded garden friends from around the world.
