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The Self-Sustaining Garden: The Guide to Matrix Planting

Articles: The Self-Sustaining Garden: The Guide to Matrix Planting

One of the most important garden books I’ve ever read was Peter Thompson’s The Looking Glass Garden: Plants and Gardens of the Southern Hemisphere (Timber Press, 2001). Thompson urged readers to abandon the “orthodox horticulture” espoused in the majority of English and American gardening books, in favor of a gardening approach that responds to the specifics of soil and climate—a philosophy that we strongly advocate at Pacific Horticulture. I was, therefore, excited to receive his new book and was not disappointed by its message.

Originally published in 1997, The Self-Sustaining Garden presents one of Thompson’s key beliefs: the harder gardeners work, the more problems seem to multiply in their gardens. If, however, we select our garden plants more wisely and pair them with logical and compatible partners, the plants will do the majority of the work. The concept of “matrix planting” is based upon models of natural vegetation types, wherein a variety of species grow together in harmony and in support of each other.

These models are drawn from plant communities in the world’s temperate regions: from deciduous woodlands of the Eastern US, Western Europe, and Asia; from the grass...

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Voices of the West; New Science on Life in the Garden by Frederique Lavoipierre

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