Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes has received the American Horticultural Society’s 2016 book award for excellence in writing, originality and quality. The book, published in 2015, was co-authored by Claudia West and UGA alumnus Thomas Rainer.
A principal with the firm Rhodeside & Harwell in the Washington, D.C., area, Rainer has led many of the firm’s public space, campus, green infrastructure and streetscape projects.
In the book, Rainer and West propose that rather than arrange plants in conventional masses, designers should focus on how to combine plants to function more like naturally occurring plant communities. They explore a hybrid of horticulture and ecology, creating communities of interrelated species that cover the ground in interlocking layers.
Rainer, who will return Feb. 2 to give a lecture in the College of Environment and Design, discusses the book and more in an NPR interview (http://tinyurl.com/jqatmyg).
