CLAUDIA WEST

Rebuilding abundance through innovative planting design

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CLAUDIA WEST is a planting designer who looks to natural plant communities to inform and inspire her work, which combines evocative beauty and real ecological functions. She and co-author Thomas Rainer described this design approach in Planting in a Post Wild World (Timber Press, 2015). With Thomas and Melissa Rainer, West founded Phyto Studio, a design firm based in Arlington, Va.

SCOTT BEUERLEIN: You are a leading figure in what some call the "new perennial movement." This might be a new concept to some gardeners. Can you describe it?

CLAUDIA WEST: All of us live in a world of mass extinction, warming climate, global urbanization and socio-environmental injustice. We are on a downward spiral-and the most alarming thing is that many of us don't even notice this. Every generation gets used to a lower and lower level of ecological abundance. Today’s teens don’t remember the days when forests were still filled with diverse plant communities and abundant life. And city parks that truly nurture local ecosystems and offer opportunities to immerse oneself in lush planting are rare. In the context of these realities, planting can no longer just be ornamental decoration to please the most privileged among us.

We are firmly anchored in a global community of designers, installers, managers and research professionals who seek innovative solutions to these issues. It is our goal to shift current baselines back up, rebuild abundance and ecological function and offer people meaningful opportunities to reconnect and immerse themselves in restorative, new forms of nature.

I don’t believe this is a new” movement. In fact, this cannot be a trend that comes and goes like previous perennial movements.” This is about our long-term health on this planet and about the survival of the creatures that share this world with us.