North Creek Nurseries' Claudia West co-authors book

Thomas Rainer and Claudia West reveal how plants fit together in nature and how to use this knowledge to create landscapes that are resilient, beautiful, and diverse in their new book, "Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes." The 272-page book is an optimistic manifesto pointing the way to the future of planting design.

West, a sought-after speaker on plant community-based design and the application of natural color theories to planting design, is ecological sales manager at North Creek Nurseries, a wholesale perennial grower in Landenberg, Pa. She holds a master’s degree in landscape architecture and regional planning from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Her work is centered on the development of stable, layered planting designs and the desire to make native plants widely acceptable and return them to the American landscape.

Rainer is a registered landscape architect, teacher and writer living in Arlington, Va. He is a passionate advocate for an ecologically expressive design ethic that interprets nature rather than imitating it. He has designed landscapes for the U.S. Capitol grounds, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and The New York Botanical Garden, as well as more than 80 gardens from Main to Florida. He teaches planting design at George Washington University and blogs regularly at the award-winning site Grounded Design.

The book is published by Timber Press and available there or through other online retailers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.