Herman is also especially generous with the details, like a friend offering insightful advice. For example, here’s her precise description of her pool: “The pool measures 12 by 24 feet, mirroring the dimensions of the original gamecock house, now a dining pavilion. Three inch-thick, rock-faced bluestone coping edges the pool, which is finished in a French gray plate.” Likewise, her notes on plants are conversational and useful, like when she describes Orlaya grandiflora, Herman tells the reader, “It self-sows easily, making groupings achievable, but is not problematic or invasive.”
Above: Herman is especially fond of umbels like the vibrant Zizia aurea. Photograph by Neil Landino, from A Moment in Time.
Herman is clearly a devoted plantswoman. The book features many hero shots of specific plants (all helpfully labeled). Of those close-up moments, she tells us, “I think it’s really important to have that sense of intimacy, paired with big, broad shots for context.” Herman says there easily could have been more, noting “it is about all those individual pieces that make up the greater whole.” Herman has included a Resources section at the back of the book with all her favorite places to buy plants, seeds, and garden ornaments, which will be of particular interest to gardeners in her region.
Above: Peony ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ is paired with the deep pink of Tanacetum coccineum. Photograph by Neil Landino, from A Moment in Time.
This book will appeal to anyone with an appreciation for formal, English-inspired gardens, but is also a surprisingly intimate book that any seasoned gardener will relate to.
Above: A Moment in Time: Designing a Country Garden by Kathryn Herman is available wherever books are sold including Bookshop.org.
Since its founding in 1922, the American Horticultural Society (AHS) has published dozens of books, including deep-dive guides on single issues like propagation and starting seeds. The organization’s latest is Essential Guide to Ecological Gardening, a broad yet in-depth manual on ecological gardening practices. The book is part of many new efforts underway at AHS and the third in a new series focussed on sustainably minded gardening (AHS’s Essential Guide to Perennial Gardening and Essential Guide to Organic Vegetable Gardening were published last winter).
The new books’ timing coincides with both a wave of interest in organic and ecological gardening practices and a tsunami of less-than-reliable advice on the internet and social media. Matt Matthus, senior director of horticulture at AHS, says that the organization felt the need to offer a comprehensive guide that reflected the latest horticultural research. “Home gardeners really want more accurate information and less hacks,” he says. “We felt there needed to be a book that top-line addresses all of these ecological trends across the country.” And while it may be hard to believe, even as recently as five years ago most garden books weren’t talking about keystone species, fire-wise landscapes, and forever chemicals in fertilizers, just a few of the many topics covered in Essential Guide to Ecological Gardening.
Above: AHS is headquartered at the twenty-seven-acre River Farm, which is located on part of George Washington’s original farmlands in Alexandria. Photograph courtesy of American Horticultural Society.
One thing that stands out flipping through the book is how many photos of birds, bees, butterflies, and even toads appear in its photos, a reflection of AHS encouraging gardeners to think of their gardens as a part of their local ecosystem. But this is a book for gardeners–not conservationists–so it’s not dogmatic about planting only straight-species native plants, nor does it shame gardeners for occasionally using pesticides. Rather, it offers advice for how to make better ecological choices while maintaining the aesthetics you prefer.
Above: In fall and winter, dozens of bird species feast on seeds in the gardens. In spring, queen bumblebees head straight to the blooms of blueberries and other spring-flowering shrubs and perennials. Photography by Janet Davis, courtesy of American Horticultural Society.
Essential Guide to Ecological Gardening is neither a garden design guide nor a dream book of garden tours (although we glimpse many attractive gardens in its pages): It’s a handbook and a reference book that gardeners can trust. Written by the staff of one of the oldest national gardening organizations in the United States and a team of professional consultants, its content was also reviewed by a horticultural advisory committee.
This book will appeal to beginner gardeners, but there is much for advanced gardeners as well. Here are six tips that the Gardenista team took away from this helpful new guide:
Cut back halfway in fall.
Above: Ecologically diverse landscapes have many layers and include a combination of both woody plants and herbaceous ones. They include many bloom shapes, colors, and times. Photograph by Kelly Norris, courtesy of American Horticultural Society.
By now many gardeners know that leaving old stems and leaves in place provides much-needed habitat for hibernating insects, but for gardeners accustomed to a neat and tidy cut back, this can feel messy. AHS proposes cutting plants back partially instead, writing, “Rather than cutting plants down to the ground, you can leave half to a third of the stem length in place, which provides plenty of habitat, but also gives a tidier appearance.” Come spring the fresh growth will also cover the old stems faster.
All week, we’re revisiting the most popular stories of 2025, including this one from March.
Anyone who knows British garden designer Jo Thompson’s work will not be surprised by the title of her book, The New Romantic Garden. Over the decades that Thompson has been working as a designer she, has always created atmospheric gardens with a softness and sense of atmosphere and mystery. The 30 gardens that fill the book show how a modern romantic aesthetic can be applied anywhere—from a tiny city garden to the meadows of a country estate. Thompson’s text is delightfully laced with romance, too, with references to fairies, sun goddesses, and Narnia.
Above: Benton irises and roses mingle in this romantic London garden designed by Thompson. Photograph by Jason Ingram.
The “new” in the title reflects the fact that while Thompson’s work may feel nostalgic in some regards (there are many an English rose in this book), it is firmly of-the-moment. A longtime advocate of organic gardening, Thompson designs to support biodiversity and soil health, which are on all gardeners’ minds today. There’s also a looseness and a naturalness that will appeal to fans of the new perennial movement and more naturalistic styles. This book is a fresh perspective on what a “romantic” garden is today.
Photography courtesy of The New Romantic Garden by Jo Thompson (Rizzoli).
1. Start with the story.
Above: Romantic and natural, this garden has a real sense of place and to whom it belongs (writer Justine Picardie and her husband, Philip Astor). The wildflower meadow of mostly native grasses is peppered with a few nonnatives to extend the season of pollen and visual interest. Photograph by Rachel Warne.
For all of her designs, Thompson develops a story for the garden based on her clients’ desires and the place itself. For Thompson this involves “beating the bounds of the place and really getting to grips with the space,” plus trying to understand its history and what might have been there before. But she says, storytelling can be a delicate dance. “You want to avoid creating a pastiche,” she cautions. “If I’m working with a Tudor cottage near Canterbury, I’m not going to create a little Tudor medicinal garden, but there might be elements, like medicinal plants within the planting.” Likewise, Thompson says she trusts her intuition not to take a garden too far from its roots.
All week, we’re revisiting the most popular stories of 2025, including this one from May.
A transportive garden can owe as much to a magical setting as to the plantings. At the garden of brothers and award-winning garden designers Harry and David Rich, the surrounding landscape ramps up those feelings before a visitor even sets foot in the garden. Nestled deep in Welsh woodland, this is a fairytale cottage fully immersed in nature—including roving herds of sheep—where access is possible only by bridge over a stream, a tributary of the River Wye.
The atmospheric garden is one of 18 featured in my new book Wonderlands: British Garden Designers at Home, in which I explore the private spaces of leading landscape designers, revealing how their own homes become testbeds for their professional projects; these are spaces for the slow evolution of ideas, schemes, and plant combinations, as well as private idylls where they can retreat from the world. Some are grand projects created over decades, but many, like Harry and David’s cottage garden, are hands-on gardens created with limited resources in the past few years.
Photography by Éva Németh.
Above: A run of pleached crabapple trees dissects the space and creates a link from the building to the garden.
Harry relocated from London to the secluded cottage just north of the Brecon Beacons in Wales, where he now lives with his wife, Sue, and their two children. But the garden has always been a shared project between the two brothers, who together became the youngest winners of a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2012, when Harry had just formed his landscape architecture firm and David was still at university. They went on to create two more gardens at the show, winning another gold medal in 2014.
Above: Plantings are taken right up to the cottage walls, increasing the sense of full immersion in greenery.
Happy pub day! Today, Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden finally hits bookstores. We can’t wait for you to crack it open and enjoy the contents.
A companion volume to Remodelista: The Low-Impact Home, it’s the result of longtime Gardenista writer Kendra Wilson and acclaimed photographer Caitlin Atkinson’s travels around three continents to find—and photograph—the best in gorgeous eco-minded landscapes. As a guide for future gardening, it is a show-and-tell of sustainable design and innovative ideas, articulated by the most original thinkers in the garden world today. Whether you’re a new homeowner looking for landscape guidance or a seasoned gardener in search of fresh ideas, you’ll find a wealth of inspiration inside.
Above: Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden.
Here’s just a glimpse of what you can find in its pages:
Visits to 12 exquisite gardens, both urban and rural, and details on what goes into making a brilliant front yard, summer cottage garden, stylish indoor-outdoor space, eco-conscious pool, lush green roof, and more
Fundamentals, demystified: deep dives on native plants, trees, shrubs, soil, and more
Expert tips and ideas
The Gardenista 50, a compilation of our favorite attractive, made-to-last garden tools.
P.S.: To celebrate the release, Kendra offers a sneak peek at all the cool lawn-free front yard ideas she encountered while working on the book; read the full thing over on Gardenista.
To order your copy, browse one of the retailers below.
Above: From the book: a garden visit with our friends at Mjölk in Ontario, Canada. Photograph by Caitlin Atkinson.
Happy pub day to us! Today, Gardenista: The Low-Impact Gardenfinally hits bookstores! We can’t wait for you to crack it open and enjoy the contents. Whether you’re a new homeowner looking for landscape guidance or a seasoned gardener in search of fresh ideas, you’ll find a wealth of inspiration inside.
To celebrate the release, the book’s indefatigable author, Kendra Wilson, offers another sneak peek, this time sharing all the cool lawn-free front yard ideas she encountered while working on the book.
Front gardens, stoops, driveways, and parking courts have the potential to spread cheer, absorb storm water, and harbor insects and birds. When there’s a clear design rationale at work, other people on the street will want to get on board. Here are some of our favorite ways to have a front garden that is more than “low-maintenance” (though it can be that, too). All the ideas are from our new book, out today.
Photography by Caitlin Atkinson.
Grow a sponge garden.
Above: The Philadelphia front garden of Kayla Fell and Jeff Lorenz, of design and maintenance practice, Refugia.
Jeff and Kayla removed their front lawn during their first year living in their house in Pennsylvania. Stormwater that used to flow over their compacted grass into the basement is now soaked up by closely planted perennials with mixed root profiles, and an absorbent swamp cypress.
Balance sharpness with softness.
Above: A mid-century house in Pasadena, which saw a light landscape renovation in the hands of Samuel Webb and Kara Holekamp of design group Terremoto.
The sharp lines of this classic house are made even clearer, not from subtracting but by adding lively planting around the edges. This, in turn, is in dialogue with towering trees that seem to be held back by the immaculate walls. Loose symmetry on either side of the doorway adds more contrast, with a pair of Arbutus that refuse to be identical.
Above: The preexisting parking grid lets its hair down around the edges, with a generous perimeter of permeable gravel and plants with varied root systems that soak up rain.
Re-wild the stoop.
Above: A front stoop in Brooklyn, the former home of horticulturalist Rebecca McMackin and her arborist husband Chris Roddick.
In pots on Rebecca’s stoop, long-lasting foliage of easygoing, northeastern perennials (Heuchera ‘Marmalade’ and Aquilegia canadensis) offers rest stops and shelter for small creatures. “Even in this tiny spot, it’s not hard to attract wildlife,” she says. And why let a tree pit go to waste? This one is fenced off with ad hoc railings and planted with tough natives that tolerate neglect as well as dogs. A sign directs dog owners’ attention to a couple of large rocks on the side, with the request, “Pee on me, not the tree.”
Say good-bye to mulch.
Above: With so much texture, green is never dull. Supported by trilllium, columbine, aster and ferns, the glaucous star is Fothergilla x intermedia ‘Blue Shadow’).
Like every public garden, the legendary Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA, closed when the pandemic struck. Wanting to connect with gardeners during that time, the garden began offering online classes. “After a year we had a pretty good idea of what people were interested in as well as what they needed to know—but maybe didn’t know that they needed to know,” explain Cricket Riley and Alice Kitajima, two of the book’s coauthors. In March 2021, Riley and Kitajima helped the Ruth Bancroft Garden launch their Dry Garden Design Certificate Program, which hundreds of gardeners have since completed. Now, Designing the Lush Dry Garden is meant to bring the ideas taught in this course and the deep institutional knowledge of the Ruth Bancroft Garden to an even wider audience.
Photography by Caitlin Atkinson for Designing the Lush Dry Garden.
Above: The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA. This is what the authors mean by a “lush dry garden.”
So who is this book for? Fellow Gardenista contributor Kier Homes, the third coauthor of the book, tells me, “It’s for gardeners curious about switching or tweaking the way they currently garden to an approach that is more water-conscious, sustainable, resilient, and in-sync with their climate.” Riley adds the book was written with both the novice and experienced gardener in mind. The lessons in the first part of the book lay out the basic steps to design a low-water garden, but “we also provide extensive lists of dependable, low-water plants that many people experienced in the field might not know about,” she notes. (The favorite plant lists alone might be worth the cover price.)
Above: Aloe ‘Creamsicle’ in full bloom under a mature Aloe ‘Hercules’ in the Ruth Bancroft Garden.
When Janet Mavec’s husband bought Bird Haven Farm in Western New Jersey in the 1980s, it had been the long-cherished retreat of publishing maven Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, whose most famous character was Nancy Drew. Nancy had been invented by Harriet’s father, who also came up with the Hardy Boys and earlier characters with evocative names like Dashaway Dan. His untimely death meant that his daughters inherited Miss Drew before their father was able to enjoy her success, and Harriet played the central role in turning Nancy into a publishing phenomenon. Janet, who has lived at Bird Haven Farm for 30 years, maintains that the original old stone house is haunted by Harriet.
It’s okay, she’s quite happy: on reading Janet’s entertaining and splendidly photographed book, Bird Haven Farm: The Story of an Original American Garden, it is clear that she approaches the farm’s bounty and generosity in a similar way to Harriet, sharing it with friends and family. For Harriet, it was a retreat that was also a venue for writer’s parties (her domestic focus was on the vegetable and cut flower garden). But the property’s collection of buildings, set within 100 acres, was not terribly functional, and after some sleuthing into its past, Janet decided that the renowned landscape architect Fernando Caruncho was just the person to make sense of the landscape’s clues.
Photography by Ngoc Minh Ngo, except where noted.
Above: Janet’s intensely tended vegetable garden, where she also entertains. “I spend most of my time planning which vegetables, fruits, and herbs to grow, and then dreaming up menus and parties around them.”
When Caruncho first visited Bird Haven Farm in 2001, he recalls, the property’s layout “evoked a sense of unease and constraint, as if the trees of the neighboring forest were an encroaching army, encircling the property.” Trails were cut through to invite in shafts of light and tree canopies were raised at the forest edge to highlight their forms.
Above: A circular fountain with a single jet in a calm space, designed by Fernando Caruncho. Photograph by Marion Brenner.
The new book A Year in Bloom has a great premise: Ask some of the world’s top garden people to talk about their favorite bulbs, thus solving one of gardeners’ biggest dilemmas—which of the many, many bulbs out there to plant. And the beautifully packaged results come as a relief, as the trend is mainly toward less artifice and less effort when it comes to bulbs.
Written and compiled by Lucy Bellamy (former editor of Gardens Illustrated) and photographed by Jason Ingram (the best in the business), the book’s contributors offer insights that make for a fun read. Not all of their comments made it into the book—and we have some of them here. Let’s take a look.
Above: Narcissus ‘Bath’s Flame’ and N. ‘White Lady’.
Daffodils that look like they might have been shown at the RHS exhibition halls in Westminster 100 years ago are the ones with the right look, and yellow is not to be shied away from. Of Narcissus ‘Bath’s Flame’ (above left), Lucy writes, “Over recent years there has been a trend for more delicate forms of narcissus that sit easily in semi-wild plantings, and ‘Bath’s Flame’ is at once just wild and just cultivated enough.”
Narcissus ‘White Lady’ was chosen by admired Irish plantsman Jimi Blake, who told Lucy: “This variety was originally grown as a cut flower back in 1898. It’s pure elegance on a stem, with its pristine white petals and soft yellow cup with a delicious scent. I grow this in a border with other simple narcissus such as ‘Polar Ice’, ‘Thalia’ and ‘Segovia’. The other nominee for N. ‘White Lady’ was your own Gardenista correspondent—me. They were in the old-fashioned cottage garden of my elderly next door neighbor, and they began to drift into mine, with some help.
Above: Crocus sieberi ‘Firefly’ with ruffed yellow Eranthis hyemilis (winter aconite), planted in the perfect setttng, amid leaf litter from the previous autumn.
Lucy points out that bulbs that are good for naturalizing also look quite “natural.” Crocus are small, and they shine in the low-key surroundings of dried leaves, and under the bare limbs of shrubs and trees. There is no need to bundle up the leaves of daffodils after flowering, or tie them into neat knots; the simpler forms tend to have more demure foliage, which disappears into lengthening grass as the season progresses. It’s best to leave them alone anyway, so that seeds can disperse, and bulbs can spread underground. When they appear year on year, they are “emulating the patterns they make in nature.”
Above: Narcissus bulbocodium and N. pseudonarcissus.
The hooped petticoat-shape of Narcissuc bulbocodium is the same yellow hue as other spring flowers, including daffodils, but its character is altogether different. Described by California landscape designer Ron Lutsko as “steadfast and cheerful,” it benefits from being away from the throng. “It is best grown in pots as a single-species group, to give the opportunity of closely observing the flowers.”
Delightfully named Narcissus pseudonarcissus is the diminutive wild daffodil of the Wye Valley and Welsh Borders, and it’s also the “go-to choice” for Sissinghurst’s head gardener, Troy Scott Smith. James Basson, garden designer and a Chelsea Flower Show star who is based in the French Alpes-Maritimes, says: “These daffodils revel in the stone cracks of karst landscapes [featuring eroded limestone], and they push through the snow to shout out in bright yellow.” This was the second most nominated bulb.
Above: Crocus tommasinianus and Erythronium ‘Joanna’.
Flipping through The Food Forward Garden, the first thing you notice isn’t the fruits and vegetables—and that’s intentional. Landscape designer Christian Douglas has been creating backyard kitchen gardens in Northern California for more than 12 years; in that time he has learned that clients are much more likely to tend and harvest from the garden, if it’s also a beautiful and inspiring place to spend time. So it is no surprise that each garden in his new book is as pretty as it is productive.
From a small city backyard bordered with raised beds to chef Tyler Florence’s elaborate, terraced kitchen garden, Douglas shows us the wide range of what he calls “food forward” gardens—gardens in which the food is brought forward rather than being hidden away in a back vegetable patch. Douglas believes that vegetables, fruits, herbs, and berries should share the prime real estate in our yards with patios, pools, and even the front walk. “By learning how to integrate food into our outdoor spaces, we can make better use of our time and resources,” says Douglas. These gardens aren’t designed to feed a whole family, he adds: “We are looking for people to engage more and grow something.”
The breathtaking landscapes in this book are also an invitation to readers. Douglas believes that people might be more swayed by images of beautiful, aspirational yards than a workaday, how-to guide. This is not to say that The Food Forward Garden is not packed with practical advice—it is, especially the second half of the book, which covers growing tips and specific plants—but in this book visual inspiration is always hand-in-hand with the science of growing food.
Here are 7 ideas to steal from this new book that blurs the line between backyard farming and high-end landscape design:
Above: Douglas learned through experience that his clients were much more likely to harvest the food in their gardens if they could see it from their windows.
The kitchen garden should be close to the kitchen. If it’s far away, it’s much less likely to be used. But perhaps even more important, Douglas says it should be right in sight of where you cook. “When it’s in view from the house, you can see when your strawberries are ready to harvest, you’ll know exactly when your broccoli heads are ready and not three days later when they start to go to flower,” he says. “People tend to eat more from the garden and learn faster when they’re seeing the garden several times a day.”
As a practicing architect, a professor of architecture, and the author of ten design books, Pierluigi Serraino knows modern architecture intimately. But for his latest, The Modern Garden: The Outdoor Architecture of Mid-Century America, Serraino is stepping outside. Serraino says he was motivated to curate and write this book after visiting iconic modern houses in person and seeing these structures within their landscapes.“There’s a gap of understanding between architects and landscape architects,” he says. “I have detected this time and again in my work, my research work on architectural photography and my actual work as an architect: There is a fundamental imbalance between architecture and landscape.” The Modern Garden attempts to bridge that gap.
The book features photographs from many of architectural photography’s mid-century greats, including Julius Shulman, Morley Baer, and Ernest Brown, but Serraino has combed through their archives to find photos that may be unfamiliar even to connoisseurs. “I looked specifically at shots where the camera was pointed away from the building,” says Serraino. “I uncovered the enormous richness of landscape design.”
Above: Pool, Pasadena, 1955. Architect: Hester & Davis. Landscape Architect: Unknown. Photograph by Julius Shulman.
The text unfolds as four essays that explore landscape architecture, and in some ways, this is a book aimed at professionals in the spheres of architecture and landscape architecture–Serraino calls it “an invitation for these designers to understand the reciprocity between architecture and site.” The book is also a celebration of landscape design work that often received less attention than the architecture. (Indeed many of the landscapes featured in The Modern Garden are unattributed because the designer’s names went unrecorded or have been lost.)
Perhaps most important, The Modern Garden is an excellent reference for the home gardener or professional designer creating a garden around a modern house. Flipping through these vintage landscapes, it’s hard not to notice how dynamic and playful the gardens are and in turn, to desire to recreate their spirit today. “This book resets our memory to understand how much we have lost along the way,” says Serrraino.
Here are six lessons we took away from The Modern Garden:
Photography from The Modern Garden.
1. Landscape design is not an afterthought.
Above: Lavenant House, Pasadena, 1953. Architect: Smith & Williams. Landscape Architect: Unknown. Photograph by Julius Shulman.
Serraino says the big lesson from the book for architects, landscape designers, students, and even municipalities should be that landscape should be conceived in concert with the architecture. “Today, most of the time, you see architecture that is an object on a piece of land,” says Serraino. He argues for homeowners to make a plan for their landscape design at the same time that they hire a designer to remodel or build a home, cautioning that the landscape budget is always cannibalized by the building.
2. The site should inform the garden.
Above: Otto Spaeth House, Southampton NY, 1957. Architect: Gordon Chadwick and George Nelson. Landscape Architect: Unknown. Photograph by Ezra Stoller.
Landscape architects are almost always inspired by nature, but Serraino says, “You have to be specific about what kind of nature. The landscape of Cyprus is marvelous, but it’s completely different from the one of London, which is different from that of Finland, which is different from Arizona and Mexico.” Serraino says the best landscape architecture is “more specific, a little more tailored” to its site.
3. We should blur the lines between landscape and architecture.
Above: Koch II House, Location Unknown, 1953. Architect: Carl Koch. Landscape Architect: Unknown. Photograph by Ezra Stoller.
“Chrysanthemums are long overdue for a revival,” says garden writer Naomi Slade, the author of the new book Chrysanthemums: Beautiful Varieties for Home and Garden, which is out in the U.S. now and launching in the U.K on September 12. “They’ve gotten this reputation of being workhorse flowers that are not very special,” she says. “In fact, they’re incredibly special and really interesting.”
Because chrysanthemums, or mums as they’re often called, are easy to grow and last for ages, they’ve become ubiquitous in commercial floristry. Some cut flower growers, however, have caught the heirloom chrysanthemum bug, and with the help of Slade’s book, more people will soon discover how exciting chrysanthemums can be.
Photography by Georgianna Lane from Chrysanthemums: Beautiful Varieties for Home and Garden by Naomi Slade, courtesy of Gibbs Smith Books.
Above: Slade says she was excited to discover the PIP series of commercially-grown chrysanthemums, including ‘PIP Salmon, above. “Its creamy apricot blooms have a deeper caramel stripe,” Slade writes, “The lightly brushed streaks add detail without being fussy, and impart a gentle texture that helps the flower blend with other components of a bouquet.”
Slade attributes the growing enthusiasm for chrysanthemums in part to the recent popularity of dahlias. “Chrysanthemums have all the good qualities that dahlias have,” Slade enthuses. “They pick beautifully, they photograph well, they’re wonderful for arranging. And there’s this whole other bunch of chrysanthemums, which are also hardy garden plants. So, it’s like dahlias plus.”
What happens when you assemble and photograph found bits of nature every single day for 12 years and counting? Mary Jo Hoffman calls her art—as well as her blog and her new book—Still and writes that her practice is not only “a respite from the enervating buzz of contemporary life,” but a way of paying attention. “Finding each day’s subject requires me to live more often than not in a heightened state of awareness that makes me extraordinarily happy.”
I can relate: I have a similar daily habit that evolved from collecting leaves on dog walks (see How I Became an Accidental Botanical Artist). But though we’re admiring much of the same foliage—I’m based in a bucolic patch of the Bronx and Mary Jo lives on three acres outside Minneapolis—our work is quite different.
Her photographs, whether of a single feather or an elaborate seed composition, have the satisfying completeness of solved equations. Mary Jo, you see, is a Stanford-educated applied mathematician and worked for 20 years as an aeronautical space engineer. “There will always be some engineering, more or less evident, behind what Mary Jo crafts of her materials, and what she crafts of herself,” writes her husband, Steve Hoffman, in the prologue to Still: The Art of Noticing.
Here, a look at some highlights from the book, which, when I last checked, was the best-selling volume from Phaidon Press’s spring catalogue.
Photography by Mary Jo Hoffman, courtesy of Phaidon Press.
Above: Mary Jo in her element. In a recent talk she gave at the New York Botanical Garden, Mary Jo confided she often sets out on morning walks with a coffee cup in hand and uses that as her collecting receptacle.
Still arose from a desire to develop a creative practice while her two kids were young. Mary Jo had just left her job as a rocket scientist and had patches of free time. Wanting to join an online art community, she decided to begin with photography, something she was already good at, and to spend time in nature. She committed to making her art daily for a year back in January 2012—and has never missed a day since. “It’s like my daily yoga; I find it too life-enhancing to stop.”
Above: A flatlay assemblage of box elder samaras. Early on, Mary Jo set a few rules for herself: she sticks with a white posterboard background, works only with found nature—”minimally manipulated”—and, after photographing her creations, erases the slate.
Has there ever been a less rock ‘n’ roll category of plant than shrubs, subshrubs, and bushes? A new book, Shrouded in Light: Naturalistic Planting Inspired by Wild Shrublands, makes the case that woody plant communities have some important answers for gardeners trying to figure out how to design naturalistic landscapes in a changing world. Authors Kevin Philip Williams (gardener) and Michael Guidi (ecologist), argue that in the rush to embrace prairies and perennials, shrubs have fallen from grace—and our idea of a bush bears no relation to anything in the wild.
Above: At the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Maine, fallow fields are converted into early successional shrubland habitat, through planting shrubs and initial mowing. They are crucial to the survival of dozens of animal species. Photograph by Michael Guidi.
In his excellent essay in the book’s foreword, Nigel Dunnett suggests that shrubland is closer to a natural landscape than prairie grasslands, which remain in an early successional state with grazing and fire. Neglected by us and not much grazed, the year-round, three-dimensional structure of shrubs is appreciated by the creatures that shelter in them, and the smaller plants that they shade and protect.
Above: “Atomic age junipers, neglected and thriving outside an abandoned mid-century modern structure in Denver, Colorado.” Photograph by Kevin Williams.
The cultural journey of clipped shrubs, from Sissinghurst Castle and Versailles to suburban gardens and parking lots the world over, gives them a kitsch appeal that the authors have fun with. “As society advances into post-capitalism and our hastily produced infrastructure crumbles and is abandoned, the outlines of shrubs with which we have surrounded our homes will flourish and spread, creating shrubdivisions and shruburbs,” they write.
Above: More persuasive captioning: “On wide open dunes, shrubs act as refugia, creating microclimates and windbreaks, stabilizing surfaces and depositing organic matter.” Photograph by Kevin Williams.
Dunes and dune marsh-elder (Iva imricata), make a genuinely stunning combination. Shrubs are caretakers of ecosystems, and the dune marsh-elder is a dune protector, growing close to the tideline on much of the North American Atlantic coastline.
Above: Exciting, under-subjugated patterns in the mountains of Oregon. Photograph by Sean Hogan.
Thriving in places that do not respond to a plough, and generally “under-subjugated” by people, shrublands make their own arrangements of form, color and texture, in the kind of visual patterns that we would do well to try to follow. This one, including Cascade blueberry, western azalea and hoary manzanita, occurs in Josephine County, Oregon.
Above: A dry montane shrubland in Colorado, where a desert bioregion transitions into cooler, higher mountain conditions. Photograph by Michael Guidi.
Huw Richards has vegetables in his bones. Richards grew up on an 11-acre small farm, and he became well-known in the garden world when he started posting how-to videos on YouTube at 19. The author of three previous books on vegetable gardening, Richards’ latest is TheSelf-Sufficiency Garden: Feed Your Family and Save Money, a uniquely detailed plan for growing vegetables.
“I’ve always been growing my own food, but I’d never actually measured it,” says Richards of his motivation to publish another book on a topic he has explored deeply. “With the cost of living crisis and with more people more concerned about food security, I thought now’s the time to create a project that explores that.”
Richards hatched a plot to see how much food he could grow in the equivalent of a standard half allotment, approximately the size of half a doubles tennis court. (In England, an allotment is a small parcel of land that can be rented to grow food.) To make sure the food would not go to waste and last the whole year, Richards brought on his friend, chef Sam Cooper, to share recipes for preserving the harvest. The Self-Sufficiency Garden is the result: A book-length documentation of the one-year experiment that Richards ran in the 2023 growing season.
About: Richards in his half allotment.
Read from start to finish, the book tells exactly how Richards grew a whopping 1,279 lbs. of vegetables in 1,300 square feet in a single year—which, somewhat remarkably, he did not share on social media while he was in the midst of the project, saving it for the book. Richards lays out what he did when. It is an impressive ballet of seed starting and crop rotation, but Richards doesn’t anticipate his readers will follow his plan to the letter. “I’m not telling people to just copy and paste the exact same layouts,” he says. “It’s a case study: This is what we did, and these are the results.”
Here are some ideas for how you can follow Richards’ lead.
Photography by Huw Richards, from The Self-Sufficiency Garden.
Rethink your definition of “self sufficiency.”
“People think that self-sufficiency means you have to have a homestead. I propose that you could just grow one or two herbs and be self-sufficient in those,” says Richards. “If every day during spring and summer you are eating something from your garden that is not the end goal of self-sufficiency but it’s on the starting steps.”
In the introduction to her epic new book, Visionary; Gardens and Landscapes for our Future, photographer Clare Takacs admits that in 2021 she set out to shoot only 30 to 40 gardens across the Mediterranean for the book. Instead the project, co-created with landscape architect Giacomo Guzzon, turned into an odyssey of sorts, with almost 80 gardens shot from Carmel Valley, California, to The Dandenongs in Australia, close to where she grew up.
The book showcases the way that garden design is attempting to keep pace with climate change and how it can respond to or mitigate the effects of prolonged drought, record-breaking temperatures, flooding, and extreme rainfall on our gardens. It’s a sumptuous survey of resilient garden design right now; the results are inspiring and thought-provoking, and illustrate how nature can thrive even in the most hostile environments.
Below, a peek at just a few of the magnificent gardens featured.
Above: In the Toledo garden, in Talavera de la Reina, Spain, designer Fernando Martos uses a limited palette and an understated approach to link this garden to the wider landscape. Enclosed by a curving dry stone wall, the garden features large boulders dotted around low-rise buildings and a farmhouse. The planting includes species that can cope with the exceptionally harsh environment including Euphorbia seguieriana, Stachys byzantina, Achillea tomentosa, Phlomis viscosa, and prostrate rosemary, as well as light-catching grasses including Sesleria ‘Greenlee’ and Stipa gigantea. Above: A guesthouse on an old estate in the north of Ibiza is entirely enclosed in terraced gardens with stone terraces matching the house and gravel walkways, and neat Mediterranean plantings of prostrate rosemary, ballota, achillea, Helichrysum orientale and Santolina chamaecyparissus.
Above: James Basson’s work in the south of France, where his landscape business is based, is well-known for its often trail-blazing response to climate change and reassessment of what garden design can be. His drought-tolerant plantings are more in keeping with the wild landscapes of the region. In this early project there are olive and cypress trees, clipped shrubs including rosemary, bupleurum and teucrium along with the intense blue flowers of pervoskia.
Above: The terraced gardens of The Rooster in Antiparos, Greece, meld into the landscape with native planting, fig and olive trees, along with Juniperus oxycedrus, Bougainvillea spectabilis as well as Sarcopoterium spinosum, a native species reintroduced by local nurseries. Above: A series of roof gardens designed by Piet Oudolf in collaboration with Tom de Witte, surround a private house south of Amsterdam. Plants including Allium tanguticum ‘Summer Beauty’, Amsonia hubrichtii, Calamintha nepeta, Eryngium bourgatii, Limonium platyphyllum, lavandula, Salvia yangii (syn. Perovskia atriplicifolia), Sesleria autumnalis, sporobolus, echinacea, Teucrium x lucidrys, agastache, Origanum laevigatum, Salvia sclarea, Sedum matrona,Stipa tirsa, Stachys byzantina and Festuca mairei are planted into six inches of free-draining substrate.
When my friend and colleague Margot Guralnick and I set out to write The Low-Impact Home, we had many discussions with Remodelista founder Julie Carlson about whether our project would be a beautiful coffee table book or a nuts-and-bolts manual for eco-minded homeowners. What we realized was, we needn’t sacrifice one for the other. Our book would be equal parts inspiration and information.
When I opened up Beyond the Meadows: Portrait of a Natural and Biodiverse Garden by Krautkopf, in bookstores now, I immediately recognized in it the same desire to both inspire and edify. That the book is brimming with gorgeous images isn’t all that surprising given its authors, German homesteaders Susann Probst and Yannic Schon, are professional photographers. What is unexpected, and delightful, is how much they’ve chosen to share about their experience as new homesteaders. The two really get into the weeds, if you will, of how they designed their landscape, cared for their plants, welcomed biodiversity, naturally enriched the soil, and, ultimately, became self-sufficient. Diagrams, before and after shots, and plant lists help tell their gardening journey. And they’re blessedly not shy about revealing their mistakes, either.
Above: Susann and Yannic’s homesteading journey started in 2018, when they moved from Berlin to a small cottage with lots of land in a village in northeastern Germany. It was built as a “settler’s house,” one of many that cropped up post-WWII to encourage people to become more self-sufficient. Their new book, now available in English, documents their experience working the land as new gardeners.
“To be honest, we held back from writing a gardening book for a long time,” Susann tells us. “We felt we were only at the very beginning of the learning process and therefore didn’t feel ready. However, at one point we realized that this gardening journey would never end and that we would constantly be learning new things that would be worth writing about. So there would never be the ‘right’ time to start.” The results are less guidebook and more garden memoir. “We wanted a book full of beauty and inspiration, which would nevertheless contain our knowledge and experiences from the past five years,” she says.
Susann and Yannic’s garden appeared in The Low-Impact Home—Margot and I were enchanted by their property and their commitment to ecology-based gardening—so I read their book with great interest. But even if you don’t know a thing about them and don’t harbor any fantasies about growing your own food, Beyond the Meadows is a must-read. It’s for anyone curious about how to be a better gardener or adopt more planet-friendly approaches—and also for those who simply yearn to slow down and smell the earth.
According to Wong, rewilding your land means rethinking how we garden and seeing ourselves as stewards of the land. Instead of trying to tame the land, Wong listens to it and works with what nature has already set into motion, encouraging plants that she wants to keep, and editing out ones that are highly invasive or otherwise undesired.
Blur the boundaries.
Above: Beyond what Wong affectionately deems the “weed lawn” are her vegetable and foraging beds, and beyond that a dry meadow and eventually the forest edge.
Looking out on Wong’s garden, it’s hard to tell where the garden ends and the wilderness begins–and that is intentional. “Instead of creating boundaries between wild and not wild, I like letting plants merge next to each other. I don’t need to impose hard lines demarking my garden, whether by hardscape, mulching, plastic weed control, or chemical eradication,” writes Wong of her approach to gardening.
But mark some edges.
While Wong lets the borders between her yard and the wild area get fuzzy, she purposefully marks boundaries around patches of wild plants that she wishes to keep. “Outlining these spaces can give a tiny bit of structure to a wild and sprawling garden, especially in the height of the season when things are growing like weeds,” says Wong.
Embrace wild wood.
Above: Wong creates open-lashed fences and structures from found wood, which she describes in detail in the pages of Into the Weeds.
Instead of buying fencing at the home improvement store, Wong forages “wild wood” to make fences, borders, and gates in her garden, creating her own woven wattle and open-lashed edging using wood and vines found on her property. The wild wood is in harmony with her untamed aesthetic and will eventually nourish the soil when it breaks down—it’s also eminently affordable.
Rethink your vegetable beds.
Above: Wong views raised beds as “a home base” that plants are bound to escape, rather than a strict container that must be meticulously weeded around.
Wong cultivates many edible plants in beds, but she mixes them with two types of wild plants: Familiar foraging plants and native plants that are not edible but add other benefits, like milkweed and mountain mint. “These beds are a dazzling array of diversity,” she writes. “A mixed blend of natives and nonnatives, perennials, annuals, and biannuals.”
Above: Into The Weeds is available now wherever books are sold, including Bookshop.org.
While Wong admits her forager’s approach to gardening is unconventional, she also believes that as weather becomes more extreme and unpredictable, it will be more difficult to maintain large areas in a maintained, manicured way. “I think this is where things are heading, but for now, it’s for people who are kind of like me—they’re frustrated, failed gardeners,” Wong says. “This book is for the people that can’t garden the way garden books are supposed to inspire us to garden.”
For more recently published books to check out, see:
We are longtime admirers of English writer, cook, and gardener Sarah Raven, so we were super-excited to learn that her newest book, A Year Full of Pots, is now in bookstores. In this how-to guide on all things container gardening (the third installment her series that includes A Year Full of Flowers and A Year Full of Veg), she gives detailed instructions for planning and planting in pots for each month of the year, along with color groupings, tips for what to plant where and when, and detailed plant lists with stunning photos of her own pot-filled garden at Perch Hill.
Above: An overhead view of the Oast Garden, teeming with potted plants, at Perch Hill in spring.
Raven makes it easy for neophytes and experts alike to create a beautiful container garden, no matter the size. Here are six tips from her book on how to capture ebullience and beauty in a pot.
Above: Raven planning her garden with pencil and paper.
Pot planning goes old school. While there are plenty of fancy online garden planners, there is a wonderful satisfaction that comes with pencil and paper. Raven recommends sketching out the bones of your garden, the spaces, hardscapes and major plants and then overlaying tracing paper (or even baking parchment) and then cutting circles to represent your pots and arranging them where you think you’d like the pots and plants to go. Pro tip: She recommends cutting out photos of the plants you’re considering to make sure you can visualize the best you can what the garden will look like in real life.
2. Plan for a Bride, Bridesmaid, and Gate-crasher.
Above: This pot features tulips ‘Muriel’ as the Bride, ‘Nightrider’ as the Bridesmaid, and ‘Orange Favorite’ as the all-important color-contrasting Gatecrasher. Photo by Jonathan Buckley.
Raven breaks down one of the more complicated challenges in deciding what plants go into the pot in regards to choosing a color combination. Think about the colors as the Bride, Bridesmaid and Gatechrasher, she says. The Bride is the center of attention, the one that gets all the focus. The Bridesmaid plays a supporting role in the pot, as one would play in real life—same color as the bride but not as showy. Finally the Gatecrasher adds a bit of drama with contrast. Pro tip: Get some paint chips and play around with them to see what color combinations work together.
above: An example of some of the Boiled Sweet color palette.
For those who need a bit more guidance, Raven even provides specific color palettes to try: Dark & Rich, Boiled Sweet Brilliant, Warm and Soft, and Soft and Cool. Included are extensive photos for each palette for easy reference.
3. And don’t forget the Thriller, Filler, Spiller, and Pillar.
Above: Dahlia ‘Totally Tangerine’ with Salvia ‘Amistad’ and Panicum elegans ‘Frosted Explosion’ syn. Agrostis ‘Fibre Optics’ syn. Panicum capillare ‘Sparkling Fountain’ in a metal container. Erigeron karvinskianus grows in the terracotta pot.
While we were working on our book Remodelista in Maine with the photojournalist Greta Rybus, Greta let us in on a project she was working on: a book documenting hot springs, public baths, and soaking spots the world over. We’ve been awaiting the publication of Hot Springs ever since, and as of this month it’s officially out in the world—researched, written, and photographed by Greta, who traveled to five continents and thirteen countries, from Iceland to Bolivia, Turkey to Japan, Alaska to Hungary, to make it.
Some hot springs, Greta writes in the book’s introduction, “feel like a party, others like a prayer,” but each offers the opportunity to be present, to be in community, and to reconnect with our place in nature. (One of Greta’s notes on soaking ethics at some of the wilder locations: “Remember that you are the caretaker for that moment.”)
To celebrate the book’s launch, we’re sharing a glimpse inside Hot Springs (which, rich in blues and greens, feels as serene and all-consuming as a soak, even when you’re on dry land), plus a Q+A with Greta.
Photography from Hot Springs: Photos and Stories of How the World Soaks, Swims, and Slows Down by Greta Rybus, courtesy of Ten Speed Press.
Above: The Seljavallalaud Swimming Pool in Iceland.
Remodelista: What’s your first hot spring memory?
Greta Rybus: Growing up in Idaho, hot springs were a really big part of my childhood. Idaho has many different type of geothermal pools: from wild ones in riverbanks to ones that look like swimming pools. I have two distinct memories of being in large hot pools with my arms in water wings. I can remember the smell of the sulfur and that plasticky smell of the water wings and their slight pinch on my arms.
Above: Therme Vals in Switzerland is “an austere, brutalist shrine to hot water,” Greta writes in the book, designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and built “from sixty thousand slabs of granite from local quarries.”
RM: How many hot springs did you visit while making the book?
GR: I lost count! I went through my notes and files last week and counted between sixty to seventy hot springs, depending on how I was to make that tally. There are 23 chapters in the book, divided by location. But some feature individual hot springs, and others explore entire regions with many hot pools or baths. There are thirteen countries represented across five continents. I tried hard to represent the diversity of thermal places: the hues of the water, the cultural connections, their roles in cities and remote places, how they are cared for and managed by so many, the different ways people experience them.
Above: Therme Vals. Photography is forbidden inside, but Greta obtained permission to photograph during cleaning, which lent an intimate view on another side of bathing culture: “The cleaners are specialists in caring for the granite and the water and the metal detailing,” Greta writes in the book. “They use special cloths and sprays for each surface, and they explained their careful techniques, how it took trial and error to figure it out. I thought about how our sacred, special places require work and maintenance…It requires figuring it out together, navigating each other, and tedious, quiet labor. That’s the ritual, too.” (Greta also noted in, in a recent Instagram Story, the care that her cameras required while working in such steamy environments, too.)
RM: What’s the furthest you traveled while making the book?
