Garden design aficionados, take note! My second Garden Spark speaker of 2019 will be Thomas Rainer on Thursday, September 19, presenting “Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for More Resilient Landscapes.” Thomas is an internationally known speaker on ecological landscape design, and I’m thrilled that he’s coming to Austin to take part in my Garden Spark series.

Garden Spark tickets are available by invitation. Please click here to email me and request the event page link. Let me know too if you’d like to subscribe to my email list. Subscribers get early access when tickets go on sale. Most of the seats for Thomas’s talk have already been sold, but as of this moment, 16 seats remain.

The talk will be held in northwest Austin on 9/19 from 8 to 9 pm, with a book-signing after the talk. Ticket price is $35, plus a small fee that goes to the ticket-processing website. Your attendance helps cover a fair speaking fee and venue rental, and collectively we’re able to bring talented design thinkers to speak to us. 

Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for More Resilient Landscapes

This groundbreaking talk presents a powerful alternative to traditional horticulture: designed plantings that function like naturally-occurring plant communities. Join landscape architect Thomas Rainer, a leading voice in ecological landscape design, to learn how plants fit together in nature and how to use this knowledge to create landscapes that are resilient, beautiful, and diverse. As practical as it is inspiring, this talk explores a new synthesis of ecology and horticulture that results in an intentionally designed and managed community where population dynamics are encouraged within an aesthetic framework. 

Thomas Rainer is a landscape architect, teacher, and author living in Arlington, Virginia. He’s a leader in ecological landscape design and has designed landscapes for the U.S. Capitol grounds, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, and The New York Botanical Garden, as well as over 100 gardens from Maine to Florida. His work has been featured in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Landscape Architecture Magazine, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and Architectural Digest. 

Thomas teaches planting design for George Washington University, serves as co-founder and principal for the landscape architectural firm Phyto Studio in Washington, D.C., and is the co-author along with Claudia West of the award-winning book Planting in a Post-Wild World.

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Digging Deeper

Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks by inspiring designers, landscape architects, authors, and gardeners a few times a year in Austin. These are limited-attendance events that sell out quickly, so join the Garden Spark email list to be notified in advance; simply click this link and ask to be added. Season 8 kicks off in fall 2024. Stay tuned for more info!

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