You Can Create Your Own Eden

Top landscape designers are gardening more sustainably by letting Mother Nature lead the way.

- By Tim Mckeough

An immaculate flower bed bursting with lipstick pink peonies, exotic lilies, and elegant climbing roses is a beautiful thing to behold. But after spending decades feeling as though they had to conquer nature by beating back weeds, banishing insects and animals, and toiling to maintain verdant swaths of green, many designers are now more focused on working hand in hand with nature to help landscapes tell their own stories.

"The garden has gone from just a place of pleasure to becoming the essential place of our well-being," says Thomas Woltz, the owner of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, noting that the pandemic caused many people to realize just how vital it is to maintain a connection with the outdoors. At the same time, he says, the alarming effects of climate change droughts, floods, wildfires, and fluctuations in wildlife populations are forcing us to recalibrate our relationship with our surroundings and recognize the built-in genius of Mother Nature's master plan.