The Modern Professional Planting Designer

Planted landscapes are critical to mediating climate change extremes and pollution, as well as to supporting biodiversity in our cities and neighborhoods. This is the first book to reveal how to achieve professional-level design while blending sustainability and beauty in gardens of every scale.

Today's garden designers and avid home gardeners have new concerns about ensuring their gardens are above all resilient: They must reduce urban temperatures, protect and improve wildlife habitat, and be able to thrive without traditional chemical maintenance. This volume shows us how to do all that and more step by step, covering every aspect of designing a garden, including finding relevant local environmental data, defining the actual planting challenge, telling a narrative with plants, sketching plans, designing planting compositions full of structure and texture, generating plant palettes and seasonal color schemes, and evaluating sustainability. International case studies of the best new gardens by today's top designers highlight each of these topics and delve further into the design process. Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photos, Fisher Tomlin guides readers on how to create gardens that are truly appropriate for the needs of specific landscapes and therefore likely to succeed, as well as lovely. This book is intended for professionals and students in landscape design programs, and will also appeal to a crossover lay audience of avid home gardeners.