James Van Sweden

Gardening With Nature by James van Sweden, the foremost american landscape architect of the day along with his partner Wolfgang Oehme. In the first chapter he describes his main influences then goes on to tell how he got started back in l971 when he asked Oehme to help him landscape the backyard of his old two-story victorian rowhouse in the Georgetown area of Washington DC. “Almost immediately my garden became a showplace. No one had ever seen anything quite like it… the high canopy of the Ailanthus altissima gives the space a tropical quality…” And a few pages later he says “the scent of Magnolia virginiana blossoms perfume the terrace in the cool of the evening while the cicadas sing from my Ailanthus altissima.”