Maybe seven or eight years ago, in a conversation with landscape designer Claudia West, she said a sentence that has really stuck with me, as she explained her approach to selecting and combining plants.
“Plants are the mulch,” Claudia said then, about making immersive landscapes that engage humans as much as they do pollinators and other beneficial wildlife.
Though it’s tempting to choose the plants we buy for our gardens based on looks alone, Claudia and her colleague Thomas Rainer of Phyto Studio, co-authors of the groundbreaking 2015 book “Planting in a Post-Wild World,” have tougher criteria for which plants earn a spot in their designs.
Claudia is here today to talk about how the Phyto Studio team figures out what makes the cut, and more.
Roses are ancient plants with a 35-million-year history on planet earth, so maybe it’s no surprise then that they have been a fixture in...
A reader emailed me not long ago, asking if I'd ever written a story or done a podcast about dried flowers—which ones to grow...
Have you done your bulb shopping yet? It’s ordering time—both for fall-blooming treats like Colchicum, which you can only buy now if you hurry,...
