When I first posted my idea for Wildscaping here in spring 2019, it was with the secret hope that both the word and its spirit might take on a life of its own.
Like a message in a digital bottle.
We all know what happened next. Driven by the pandemic lockdowns, we experienced a seismic cultural shift to suddenly embrace all things plants, gardens, and matters of biodiversity in ways no-one could have ever predicted or imagined.
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.
Boo! It’s that time of year again when pagan festivals, monster horror films, and religious holidays all converge into an unholy clash.
From Hallowe’en to Night of the Living Dead to El Dia de Muerte, there’s something sweetly macabre about our autumnal obsession to summon forth the denizens of the spirit world and celebrate the enigma of life beyond the grave.
With all this morbidity sanctifying the air, it makes me wonder: What about our gardens? Do they really die each year? Or is it more like a form of reincarnation?
This is a movement which belongs to no one.
In truth, because the New Perennial movement can belong to anyone and everyone.
First and foremost, it’s about seeing plants in all their four-dimensional splendour and experiencing the slow-motion fireworks, which ensue as they flow and interact.
You don’t need a garden to do that. Just the pupils in your eyes.
My first glimpse of Rotterdam was a blast of pure future shock.
Walking out of the concrete slab and webbed glass roof of the Centraal train station, the cityscape comes on like a massive architectural experiment gone wild.
Now down to the final few days of my trip, I’d come south in mid-July to visit two of Piet Oudolf’s most recent public projects in the Netherlands. While these gardens express some of his latest design thinking, they’re not yet so well known to the outside world.
A powerful juxtaposition of nature recast in a hypermodern urban frame.
