The dynamic garden

“The main objective is to encourage biological diversity, a source of wonder and our guarantee for the future”
Gilles Clement

Early on in my training as a landscape architect, whilst studying at RMIT in Melbourne, I came across Gilles Clement. His philosophy of gardens and landscapes has been influential on my approach to this discipline throughout my own work.

Clement rejects the idea of a garden being a static object – controlled by us to be tamed, but that it is ‘in motion’. He argues that we should understand the dynamics of plants and allow the natural processes that take course. Plants will settle where they wish, and will order themselves according to the biological interactions within the landscape. Our job is to understand these interactions, the plant’s behaviours and the environment we are creating for them. We can then guide these processes to happen, allowing for the potential of our planting designs to be realised in full.

The French landscape architect also argues that the garden is something to be interacted with, not just to be looked at. A garden should be a sensory experience, where we can explore, discover and in turn, relax.

“You kneel, lie down, rub against, smell, inhale. My gardens are meant to be brushed against”

Gilles Clement