The New Romantic Garden

Formal garden design remains popular because it gives natural spaces a feeling of serenity and structure, though many homeowners and home gardeners don't realize structure doesn't have to mean all closely clipped shrubs and geometric borders, but that it can be interpreted as a series of arched trellises draped with vining, heady, languid roses or using even the wildest-branching native perennials in arrangements or proportions that help the eye discern where each plant s borders begin and end.

Over her 30-year career, Thompson has become recognized as master of creating decadently planted, well proportioned, English-style gardens rendered modern by a staunch commitment to biodiversity, and to the eye this translates as a looser formality than English gardens of the past, though every bit as lovely and luscious. Thompson peppers her wonderfully witty texts with a dash of lore as a nod to the idea that we are not, in fact, in complete charge of how our gardens grow; other forces are always at work, as they should be when we allow sustainable practices to help us guide rather than try to dominate nature's own efforts.