Author Event: Margie Ruddick - "Wild By Design"

This event will take place at 6422 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck, NY 12571

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In 2005, following two decades of professional accolades, Margie Ruddick created a new kind of garden that landed her in court. Through selective mowing, planting, pruning, and frequently doing no maintenance, the internationally renowned landscape designer, a winner of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, created a wild landscape that—while beautiful—was unlike any front yard her neighbors had ever seen. When she received a summons from the city citing her garden’s weed height, Ruddick questioned her “wild experiment” and began to wonder: What are the principles that make a landscape wild without being chaotic? It was this experience that set Ruddick on a mission to redefine the meaning of sustainable landscape design. 

With Wild by Design: Strategies for Creating Life-Enhancing Landscapes Ruddick delivers an inspirational guide for innovative landscape design that integrates ecology, urban planning, and culture. Her globe-spanning examples demonstrate how a project’s function and design can work in concert to create beautiful, healthy places that connect people with the natural systems around them. She argues that it’s not enough for a place to fulfill sustainability checklists with the optimized energy performance or stormwater management techniques; to invest people in landscapes, designers must also consider the cultural and artistic aspects of landscapes.