American Roots: Lessons and Inspiration from the Designers Reimagining Our Home Gardens

For decades, many American gardens fell short on originality. People were content with cookie-cutter landscapes--the iconic lawn or the perennial-lined front walk and picket fence--or they mimicked foreign styles like English cottage gardens and Japanese Zen landscapes. This has changed in recent years, as bold designers are championing an American design aesthetic that embraces regional culture, plants, and growing conditions.

American Roots celebrates this diversity by highlighting a thoughtfully curated list of designers and creatives with exceptional home gardens, focused on those who push boundaries, trial extraordinary plants, embrace a regional ethos, and express their talents in highly personal ways. Covering all the regions of the country, the profiles dive into design influences, share the back stories of the gardens and their designers, and offer information-packed sidebars with design tips and plant palettes.

American Roots is an invitation to reconsider how we define the American garden and offers guidance and encouragement to anyone looking to dig more deeply into their own home garden.