Plant Communities & Vertical Layers

Wintry mix and Stage 5 Restrictions have us turning once again to the bookshelf. In this episode, we’re diving into Thomas Rainer and Claudia West’s instant classic Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes (Timber Press, 2015). Rainer and West write that the “vast wild spaces” that once covered North America have been tamed into abstraction; due to industrialization, species displacement, and climate change, the “native” ideal is unobtainable. Yet we can design a new type of wilderness in our cities and our yards by designing plant communities. Regarding plants as “related populations, not isolated individuals,” the authors argue for densely layering the ground with “living mulch” and letting plants interact. They provide a systematic method for making such landscapes legible, functional, and biodiverse. We discuss Rainer and West’s concept of plant communities and how it overlaps with other design approaches, like permaculture, design for wildlife, and xeriscape.

A diagram showing vertical layers from Planting in A Post-Wild World

First up, Leah shares a wick-watering macramé hanger invention (patent pending) and Colleen has an update on her Roy Diblik-inspired, super-low-maintenance front yard revamp.

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