Note: This workshop is open to professional landscape designers only.

Functional and ecological plantings, such as rain gardens and meadows, are gaining on popularity but also face severe challenges. We won’t solve these issues if we continue to compare planting design to painting on canvas and perceive plants as individual objects in space. It is time for a new approach -- a plant community-based method that has evolved in the world of ecological science.

Join us as we translate ecological principles of wild plant communities into planting design tools that will help you create better landscapes. This interactive workshop will introduce you to the science behind stable and lasting plant combination. You will learn the skill of creating plant communities in four hands-on design exercises and practice this technique in a hypothetical planting project.

• Understand scientific foundation of stable plant communities and learn how species fill ecological and spatial niches in successful planting.
• Learn how to translate the principles of wild plant communities into designed planting.
• Learn to visualize complex planting schemes and prepare installation guides.

Claudia West is the co-author of Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes, and has an extensive background in horticulture, ecology and environmental restoration. West is a consultant for North Creek Nurseries and has worked for landscape architects Wolfgang Oehme and Carol Oppenheimer and for Sylva Native Nursery. West holds a Master’s Degree of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning from the Technical University of Munich, Germany.