Garden Futures: Designing with Nature

Gardens have always been places of leisure, pleasure, and production - they reflect identities, dreams, and visions. Deeply rooted in their culture, gardens have immense symbolic potential. The recent revival of horticulture has focused less on the garden as a romantic refuge than as a place where we imagine the future and develop solutions. Urban farms, vertical gardens, and other innovative projects in art, architecture, and urban planning demonstrate that the present return to the garden is no timid retreat, but a pioneering quest for a world in which social and ecological justice count for something. Garden Futures examines what gardens and their design reveal about our relationship to nature. In exploring the history of ideas behind the genesis of the modern garden, the book takes a close look at the present, goes in search of origins in the past, and builds bridges into the future. Stunning photographs illustrate ground-breaking gardens by such designers as Derek Jarman and Piet