Burle Marx Landscape vs Naturalistic Planting

ブルレ・マルクスの景観 / 自然主義プランティング

Both sit in Garden Styles, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.

Burle Marx Landscape

Burle Marx Landscape — コパカバーナの波の舗道（CC BY-SA 2.0）Burle Marx Landscape — シチオ・ブルレ・マルクス（CC BY-SA 3.0）Burle Marx Landscape — イタマラチー宮 水庭（ロベルト・ブルレ・マルクス） — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

The inventor of modernist landscape, massing Brazilian tropical plants in color fields like abstract painting. As the Copacabana wave pavement shows, he designed the ground as one graphic.

Naturalistic Planting

Naturalistic Planting — ハイラインの植栽（CC BY-SA 4.0）Naturalistic Planting — Piet Oudolf の庭（Voorlinden）— Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0Naturalistic Planting — Piet Oudolf による RHS Wisley の植栽 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0

Planting design modeled on perennial meadow ecologies, led by Piet Oudolf: beauty extended to the dead seed heads of winter, a year-round idea rewriting urban public space from the High Line outward.

Burle Marx LandscapeNaturalistic Planting
Era1930s–19941990s–
FamilyGarden StylesGarden Styles
KindStyleStyle
CuesPlanting as color fields / Organic curves in plan / The tropical palette / Paving as graphicPerennial and grass communities / The beauty of dieback / Drifts of planting / Ecology as the model
Best used forDesigning a plaza or roof plane as one picture read from above · Making leaf form and color contrast the subject with tropical speciesPlanting public space such as a riverbank or an old viaduct cheaply · Designing a garden open all year that must hold up in winter
TypeOne species per large block, planes told apart by leaf and colorPerennials and grasses, few species repeated in large masses
CompositionCurves divide the plane, straight lines kept to paving edgesDrifts that meander and interlock along blended edges
MaterialThe figure drawn in stone paving, water used as empty spaceA single cut in spring, seed heads and stems left standing
CautionDrawing the curves as decoration while ignoring growth rates lets the blocks break down within years and the color edges go muddy.Copying the look by adding species lets the strongest grasses smother the rest by the second year, and the drift turns into weeds.

Put these two together

Garden Styles

IndexStyle