'Your Natural Garden': New book by Kelly D. Norris is guide to tending naturalistic garden

Plantsman Kelly D. Norris has written a new book, "Your Natural Garden: A Practical Guide to Caring for an Ecologically Vibrant Home Garden," on maintaining natural gardens.

"Naturalistic plantings, overflowing with biodiverse communities of plants, are filling front and backyards around the globe with colorful blooms, easy-care plants, and wildlife habitat. But caring for a naturalistic garden is vastly different than caring for a traditional home landscape of carefully manicured plants separated by mulch and regularly primped and pruned. In 'Your Natural Garden,' tending your garden properly means understanding its connection to the greater natural world and using garden care methods that mimic nature instead of controlling it," the book summary reads.

Topics covered include how to:

• Encourage and establish complexity in a new garden.
• Promote growth and variation by letting plants self-propagate.
• Determine when and what to edit and when it’s best to let chaos rein.
• Decide if and when weeding is necessary.
• Foster the insects and other animals that rely on plants.
• Understand succession in the naturalistic garden and why it’s important.
• Know when it’s time to cut back the garden and how to do it right.
  

The 208-page book, published by Cool Springs Press from The Quarto Group, publishes Jan. 14, 2025, and will sell for $30 in the U.S. and $40 in Canada.

“This guide provides in-depth approaches for us to think about our gardens as part of a greater ecosystem. Kelly provides guidance on design, ecological gardening approaches — including a great section on attracting insects and birds called 'creature features' — and everything else we need to know to create and be stewards of a natural, wild and biodiverse garden," said Andrew Bunting, vice president of horticulture for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

Norris created an exhibit for the 2024 PHS Philadelphia Flower Show called “A Beautiful Disturbance,” which showcased a vacant lot overtaken by plants to illustrate the popular land rewilding trend.

Norris, also the author of "New Naturalism," formerly directed horticulture and education at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden. His work has been featured in publications like The New York Times and Better Homes and Gardens. As a writer and photographer, he contributes to popular gardening magazines and industry trade publications.