Wild By Design: Strategies for Creating Life-Enhancing Landscapes

Using her own landscape as the background in formulating her design principles, landscape designer Margie Ruddick lists five strategies that guide her work. These include reinvention which necessitates a total redo of a site, restoration or recovering that which has been lost at a site, conservation of natural resources or culture, regeneration meaning ensuring the continuance of the project, and finally expression showing the artistic and creative endeavor. In the following five chapters, each of these strategies is illustrated in specific projects such as restoration of the Queens Plaza traffic nightmare in Long Island City, NY. In Sichuan, China, The Living Water Park served as a model for the biological purification of water through settlement, filtration, and aeration. Trenton Capital Parks is another river restoration project that connects the city with the river. In Baja California, Casa Finisterra melds landscape with contemporary design. Liberty State Park in New Jersey serves as a regenerative example of a site transforming from landfill to forest, meadow, wetland.

The book is richly illustrated with colorful photos of various landscapes, parks, projects and landscape designs. In preserving the natural wildness or nature of a setting, the inherent beauty of the venue is sustained, the point emphasized by the author.