Bookshelf    Wild By Design: Strategies for Creating Life-Enhancing Landscapes

Wild By Design: Strategies for Creating Life-Enhancing Landscapes

By Margie Ruddick (Island Press, 2016) Buy It Now

Winner of the 2013 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, Dutchess County resident Ruddick is known for integrating wild native plants and natural elements into her landscape designs. In this beautifully photographed book, she lays out five basic principles of design—Reinvention, Restoration, Conservation, Regeneration, and Expression—and applies them in turn to a wildly diverse series of projects around the globe. These include reenvisioning a noisy and dangerous subway plaza in Queens, combining a traditional Chinese garden with water purification systems in Sichuan’s Living Water Park, turning a New Jersey landfill into multiple ecosystems, and designing a culturally sensitive retreat center in Western Ghats, India. Ruddick makes a passionate case for sustainable and innovative approaches that link us to natural rhythms. Her book will inspire landscape architects and anyone interested in urban planning and green design.