Designing with Minnesota Native Plants: Strategies for Project Success
By Dan Shaw, M.L.AClick here for an order form
This is one of the first books to focus directly on the common reservations professionals and homeowners have about using native plants in landscaping. Other guidebooks rarely consider these problems upfront as part of a design strategy. Dan addresses issues such as aesthetics, costs, installation and maintenance using local experience and examples.
The guidebook uses beautiful color photos and illustrations to demonstrate how to successfully use native plants in planned landscapes in Minnesota. Dan asked design firms and nurseries throughout the region to submit images for the book that illustrate the successful use of edge treatments, formal plantings, controllable natives, combinations of native and cultivated species, and other strategies of native-plant design.
Designing with Minnesota Native Plants is geared to professional designers, landscapers, developers and architects but offers valuable and understandable information to interested amateurs alike. Greening's work has shown that sustainable landscaping using native plants is actually a lower cost option than traditional landscaping and it improves storm water runoff and air quality in the long run.
Dan (M.L.A., Landscape Architecture) is involved in wetland, forest and prairie restoration work, as well as erosion control, planting and interpretive design projects. He worked for several years as an ecologist and designer in the private sector and for state government, and is the author of many publications including, Plants for Stormwater Design and Native Vegetation in Restored and Created Wetlands. He is also an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, teaching plant identification and planting design classes.
The guidebook was funded as part of the 1999-2005 River Steward Program which was made possible through the generosity of The Saint Paul Foundation, Katherine B. Andersen Foundation, F.R. Bigelow Foundation and the City of Saint Paul.
Click here for an order form