Quick Takes With: Christian Douglas

When multiple people we admire tell us we should check out The Food Forward Garden, a new gardening book coming out this fall, we pay attention. “It’s a design manual on the art, craft, and importance of growing food closer to home,” says its author, landscape architect Christian Douglas, who has made a name in the industry designing beautiful gardens that provide both nourishment and beneficial habitats. Now based in the Bay Area, he began his career in England, creating landscapes for historic estates and London townhomes, after which he spent several years “exploring desert ecologies and regenerative agriculture throughout the world.” Today, his work is an appealing reflection of this background: His landscapes are a little structured, a little wild—and always teeming with life.

Christian’s book hits bookstores this October. In the meantime, read his thoughts below on the “Russian doll” method of planting, the plant he’s “fallen deeply for,” and his current garden fetish.

Photography by Sasha Gulish, courtesy of Christian Douglas, unless otherwise noted.

Your first garden memory:

Gardening with my father on our wild and weedy 1970s Oxfordshire allotment. Eating muddy carrots and earthing up potatoes. Wheelbarrow rides and grass paths. Watering cans and runner beans.

The seed that started it all..

Garden-related book you return to time and again:

Second Nature by Michael Pollan. A wonderful love letter to gardens.

Instagram account that inspires you:

Todd Carr and Carter Harrington’s @hortandpott. These two creatives are fascinating to watch as they develop their business and homestead in Upstate New York. Maximalist, botanical heaven.

Describe in three words your garden aesthetic.

Curated, timeless, immersive.

Plant that makes you swoon:

A tangle of Carex pansa and California poppies. I’ve fallen quite deeply for Eschscholzia californica ‘Alba’ (poppies) these past few years. Something about the buttery lemon blooms feel soft and delicious on the eyes, especially when a bumble bee is romping around on the anthers.

Plant that makes you want to run the other way:

Blocks of ‘Platinum Beauty’ Lomandra. I can’t quite get to grips with the “why” of variegated grasses.

Favorite go-to plant:

Vitis ‘Rogers Red’ (grape) and I are having a moment lately. It doubles wonderfully as a shade vine and rambunctious groundcover, with delicious table grapes and crimson leaves in the autumn. Lower water use. Great for florals, too.

Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:

Close your gate. While both are lovely to have in the garden, deer and vegetables don’t play well together. I’ve learned (and subsequently, unlearned) that lesson far too many times to remember.

Unpopular gardening opinion:

Expanses of gravel to fill a space is not always the answer. Expanses of beneficial plants, however…

Gardening or design trend that needs to go:

Vinyl pergolas. I’m not even sure if they are trending, but they’re certainly hard to watch. How can we stop them?

Old wives’ tale gardening trick that actually works:

One pearl of wisdom from my victory-gardening father is to pluck the flowers from potato plants for bigger harvests. He’s been providing potatoes for our family roast dinners for 50 years!

Favorite gardening hack:

A simple “Russian doll” planting technique: Use the dappled shade from your apple tree to grow blueberries, then use the dappled shade from your blueberries to grow alpine strawberries. If you’re still feeling adventurous, add yerba buena (delicious herbal tea) for your final layer.

Favorite way to bring the outdoors in.

A full basket of produce on the counter, while an errant earwig makes a run for it—works every time.

Favorite hardscaping material:

Anything that comes with a known or unknown story. Foot-worn cobbles, lichen mottled bricks, weathered lumber. We recently created a sheltered dining area from old growth redwood siding recovered from a building leveled in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Finding these forgotten treasures and giving them new purpose brings a certain depth and richness that would be hard to re-create with modern materials.

Tool you can’t live without:

An impossible call between my Niwaki hori-hori and pruners.

Go-to gardening outfit:

Grubby chelsea boots, denim, and a gilet (vest) with pockets filled with string and plant labels. Of course, a clipped tool holster, and the ultimate garden accessory (and my not-so-secret fetish), harvest basket(s). Fortunately, like slices of cake, you can never have too many.

Every garden needs a…

Unapologetic meadow, water element for pollinators, and something you can eat.

Favorite nursery, plant shop, or seed company:

Cottage Gardens Petaluma and Annie’s Annuals. Incredible growers and wonderful varieties. There are also so many fantastic seed companies – Row 7, Territorial Seeds, Baker Creek are some of my favorites. Frankly, anyone carrying Black Futsu winter squash deserves a mention. A new obsession of mine.

On your wishlist:

Crafting a farmstead retreat in the Hudson Valley or West Sonoma in the morning, then shopping for garden antiques the rest of the day. And, if they’ll have me back, I would love to restore a Lutyens/Jekyll legacy garden in England.

Not-to-be-missed public garden/park/botanical garden:

Sissinghurst and Great Dixter – England. Point Reyes National Seashore – California. The Highline (spring) and The Ramble (autumn), Central Park – NY.

The REAL reason you garden:

My microcosmic means to contribute to something greater, while working towards my personal “blue zone” goals—movement, purpose, community.

Thanks so much, Christian! You can follow his work on Instagram @christian_douglas_design.

For previous Quick Takes, go here.