Planting by Noel Kingsbury

Author:Noel Kingsbury [Kingsbury, Noel and Oudolf, Piet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: 2015-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

A gardener or designer never has an infinite range of possibilities to work with. This ideal position is most likely reached by those working in balmy west coast climates where mixing and matching of plants from a wide range of climate zones is possible: such lucky people live and garden on the north-west Atlantic-facing fringes of Europe, and the area around San Francisco Bay where the temperature is more or less the same all year round.

Each different environment suggests particular plants, and those plants which thrive in a given environment are highly likely to share certain structural and textural (and indeed foliage color) characteristics. Anyone wanting to put together a planting for a site needs to become aware of their particular environment and the visual themes it suggests – and then run with it. Very often climatic and other environmental factors constrain the potential range of plants, which may well eliminate whole suites of particular structural types: for example, windy situations rule out large, soft foliage. If using locally native plants is emphasized, this may well dictate certain levels of structural interest; think of the wide range of plants with clear rosettes to be found in the southern hemisphere. Habitats tend to feature distinctive plant shapes and textures for very good reasons of evolutionary adaptation, such as the hummocky shapes of fine-textured foliage so typical of environments where desiccation is a major issue, be it the winds of exposed sites in northern Europe or the relentless summer sun of the continent’s south.

A self-consciously naturalistic aesthetic also dictates certain structures. In particular, the fact that grasses and grass-like plants dominate much open habitat in temperate regions means that any attempt at naturalism is going to have to involve them. This becomes especially clear in a project such as the New York High Line, where grasses are such an important part of the mix.

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