Christian Douglas: An Interview with the Bay Area Landscape Architect

When multiple people we admire tell us we should check out The Food Forward Garden, a new gardening book coming out this fall, we pay attention. “It’s a design manual on the art, craft, and importance of growing food closer to home,” says its author, landscape architect Christian Douglas, who has made a name in the industry designing beautiful gardens that provide both nourishment and beneficial habitats. Now based in the Bay Area, he began his career in England, creating landscapes for historic estates and London townhomes, after which he spent several years “exploring desert ecologies and regenerative agriculture throughout the world.” Today, his work is an appealing reflection of this background: His landscapes are a little structured, a little wild—and always teeming with life.

Christian’s book hits bookstores this October. In the meantime, read his thoughts below on the “Russian doll” method of planting, the plant he’s “fallen deeply for,” and his current garden fetish.

Photography by Sasha Gulish, courtesy of Christian Douglas, unless otherwise noted.

Your first garden memory:

Gardening with my father on our wild and weedy 1970s Oxfordshire allotment. Eating muddy carrots and earthing up potatoes. Wheelbarrow rides and grass paths. Watering cans and runner beans.

The seed that started it all..

Garden-related book you return to time and again:

Second Nature by Michael Pollan. A wonderful love letter to gardens.

Instagram account that inspires you:

Todd Carr and Carter Harrington’s @hortandpott. These two creatives are fascinating to watch as they develop their business and homestead in Upstate New York. Maximalist, botanical heaven.

Describe in three words your garden aesthetic.

Curated, timeless, immersive.

Plant that makes you swoon:

A tangle of Carex pansa and California poppies. I’ve fallen quite deeply for Eschscholzia californica ‘Alba’ (poppies) these past few years. Something about the buttery lemon blooms feel soft and delicious on the eyes, especially when a bumble bee is romping around on the anthers.

Plant that makes you want to run the other way:

Blocks of ‘Platinum Beauty’ Lomandra. I can’t quite get to grips with the “why” of variegated grasses.

Favorite go-to plant:

Vitis ‘Rogers Red’ (grape) and I are having a moment lately. It doubles wonderfully as a shade vine and rambunctious groundcover, with delicious table grapes and crimson leaves in the autumn. Lower water use. Great for florals, too.

Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:

Close your gate. While both are lovely to have in the garden, deer and vegetables don’t play well together. I’ve learned (and subsequently, unlearned) that lesson far too many times to remember.

Unpopular gardening opinion: