"The Garden As Mediator" with Thomas Rainer
Thursday, July 9 at 4:00pm
Garland Farm
$10 members / $20 non-members / free for students
*If you register to attend on Zoom, a link will be sent you separately. Registrations within one hour of the program's start may not be received in time for you to participate live, but you will be sent a recording of the program once the video has been processed and uploaded.
In this talk, Thomas Rainer, principal of Phyto Studio and co-author of Planting in a Post-Wild World, explores the garden as a mediating force—an idea that quietly connects contemporary plant systems thinking with the work of Beatrix Farrand. Though not a naturalistic designer, Farrand’s gardens consistently negotiated between worlds: European tradition and American place, architecture and landscape, public formality and private intimacy. Her work understood the garden not as a static composition, but as an active intermediary shaped by craft, restraint, and care.
Rainer brings this idea forward, framing gardens as mediators between order and wildness, control and dynamism, ecology and art. Drawing on Phyto’s work in public landscapes across North America, he presents plant systems thinking as a distinctly American, pragmatic approach—one that values performance, adaptation, and beauty in equal measure. Central to the talk is time as a design material, with growth and change embraced not as problems to solve, but as partners in design.
Thomas Rainer is a leading voice in ecological landscape design, pioneering a plant systems approach that anticipates a changing future. As a registered landscape architect based in Arlington, Virginia, Thomas reimagines ecological planting for gardens and public spaces, focusing on merging ecology with horticulture to shape resilient, adaptive landscapes that address today’s environmental challenges. His career features signature designs at landmark locations such as the Battery Park, Toronto Botanical Garden, and The New York Botanical Garden. He has designed over 125 residential gardens spanning from Maine to Florida. Thomas has taught planting design for the George Washington University Landscape Design program, as well as design workshops globally. He is the co-author of the bestselling Planting in a Post-Wild World with Claudia West.
Photo Credit: Jason Varney
