Ask the Expert: Horticulturist Kelly D. Norris on the ‘New Naturalism’
Photography courtesy of Kelly D. Norris.
Gardeners are learning more every year about how our decisions can benefit the environment.
Excited to learn how garden designers are adopting this new knowledge, I spoke recently with Kelly D. Norris, the award-winning horticulturalist and author of New Naturalism (Cool Spring Press, 2021), about his naturalistic approach to design.
Norris ripped out his front yard lawn in Des Moines, Iowa, and replaced it with into a vibrant meadow, teaming with wildlife.
What is New Naturalism?
Keith Wiley used it as a subtitle in his book On the Wild Side: Experiments in New Naturalism, which espoused a gardening philosophy borne from his intimate experiences with wild plant communities and habitats.
How do you create a garden that’s “on the wild side”?
At a client’s garden in Ames, Iowa, Norris created a dry meadow gravel garden. It’s about living in cooperation with the garden-of-place as opposed to having to tend or maintain it.
Norris was hired to create a landscape for the Blank Performing Arts Center, Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, the summer home of the Des Moines Metro Opera. We need a way forward that fosters a great reconnection of humanity to the natural world.
Why is this new style of planting important with climate change?
Stylistically, it can look like anything because it’s a vision for gardens connected to the character and nature of place.
What should you look for when buying plants?
“Our living case study in sand and stress,” says Norris of this area of his garden, called the Romp, shown one year after installation.
Norris’s husband, who is also a horticulturalist, as well as an etymologist, “confirmed the presence of at least 27 superfamilies of wasps” in this half-acre plot. When creating planting palettes, look for plants that have some connection to the place you garden.
What are some of your favorite native plants?
“We garden on glacial hardpan clay and it’s tedious,” admits Norris of his home garden in Des Moines. I have the pleasure of working in many different environments and ecologies across the United States, but I’m natively a boy of the prairie.
Kelly D. Norris at home tending to his front yard meadow. The course is the latest iteration of my studio practice, a synthesis of experience, research and review of the scientific literature distilled into a gardener’s voice.
Tell me about the New Naturalism Academy. What can readers learn by attending?