Naturalistic garden

Continuing her series on designers' gardens, this month Clare Foster visits the Dutch garden of Piet Oudolf, the hub of his experimentation with plants for more than 30 years

All around the world, cities have seen wildlife return to areas where tourists aren’t crowding them out this year. It’s a beautiful reminder that nature is a powerhouse: left untamed, the natural world will create its own sense of balance and beauty. Rather than fight these forces, a wonderful way to design your home garden design is to embrace what nature does best and let your landscaping run wild with a naturalistic feel.

In gardening, wild may be the word of the moment but it is a loaded term—because what is wild? Any element of interference, management, or design suggests

Starting a new garden from scratch can be daunting, but it’s also a fantastic opportunity to create exactly what you want. The vision I had for my new garden (two […]

When planting a naturalistic garden, is having more plants always better? "New Naturalism" author Kelly Norris says “yes.”

It’s about setting aside our desire for control to instead work in partnership with nature. This is essentially the guiding principle behind the naturalistic garden, a plant-driven approach to landscape design that has been around in one form or another since Englishman William Robinson first published his first edition of The Wild Garden in 1870.

In gardening, wild may be the word of the moment but it is a loaded term—because what is wild? Any element of interference, management, or design suggests

If you're curious to try out a more naturalistic approach to planting design, here are some practical hacks to help you get the root ball rolling Since many gardeners are likely working with a current gardens vs. the freedom of a fresh canvas, these ideas can help you test out some smaller projects and experiments over time. In Part One of this post, I talked about the concept of seeing plants differently: in terms of beauty and purpose, and the roles they can play within a biodiverse plant…

Suffolk garden design of beautiful naturalistic perennial planting, limestone gravel pathways and clay pavers, multi-stem birch trees, crab apple trees, wildflower meadow and minimalist front garden of calamagrostis karl forester with beech cylinders