Thomas Rainer’s Biography
Thomas Rainer is a registered landscape architect, teacher, and author that lives in Arlington, Virginia. He is a leading voice in ecological landscape design and has designed landscapes for the U.S. Capitol grounds, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, and The New York Botanical Garden, as well as over 100 gardens from Maine to Florida. He is a celebrated public speaker who has garnered acclaim for his passionate presentations to audiences across the U.S. and in Europe. Thomas serves as a Principal for the landscape architectural and consulting firm Phyto Studio in Washington, D.C.
Thomas received his Masters Degree from the University of Georgia. Thomas has worked for the firms Oehme, van Sweden and Associates, and was most recently a Principal at the landscape architectural and planning firm, Rhodeside & Harwell. He has a broad range of experience in project types ranging from intimate residential gardens to expansive estates, rooftop gardens, botanical gardens, large-scale green infrastructure design & implementation, and national memorials. His work has been featured in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Landscape Architecture Magazine, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and Architectural Digest.
While passionate about design and focusing on details, Thomas is a specialist in applying innovative planting concepts to create ecologically-functional designed landscapes. His recent work focuses on the artful interpretation of wild plant communities into designed plantings that thrive in the context of towns and cities. He also continues to love working on residential gardens, enjoying the intimate collaboration with clients and creating spaces.
Thomas teaches planting design for the George Washington University Landscape Design program. His recently published book co-authored with Claudia West, Planting in a Post-Wild World, was released in fall 2015 from Timber Press and was selected by the American Horticultural Society as one of the 2016 books of the year.
You can learn more about Thomas on his website thomasrainer.com, his firm Phyto at phytostudio.com, and on Instagram where his handle is @thomasrainerdc.
SHOW NOTES
Thomas’s childhood experiences with plants and wilderness
Our recent trip to see Amsonia in Arkansas (Searching for Amsonia in Arkansas Part 1 and Searching for Amsonia in Arkansas Part 2)
The shift from being a lawyer to becoming a landscape architect and advice for students interested in switching careers
Traveling with Darrel Morrison on graduate school student trips studying the landscapes of the south
Creating a language around plant communities to communicate with others
How gardeners can learn to read plant body language (aka plant form) to layer diversity
How to cover the ground with plants to reduce work and searching for plants that will grow well as ground covers
Planting in a Post-wild World by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West
The five principles of designed plant communities and how they distilled the principles down
Richard Hansen and Friedrich Stahl and their book Perennials and Their Garden Habitats
Embracing stress in plantings
Flickr as a resource to see plant growth in the wild
Limiting factors for naturalistic planting in home gardens including plant height similarity, scale, and tidiness
Native plants need to be approached with artistry like the creativity of how plants are used at Chanticleer or Great Dixter
Failures in green infrastructure and pollinator plantings and why
The importance of doing one outstanding naturalistic planting example that becomes a model (and Jim Collins Good to Great bullets before cannonballs)
How Thomas hones his skills with the challenges of site design and finding inspiration from plant people
Thomas technique of using his mental library during the design process of thinking back to photos or places he’s seen before
Thomas’s recent attention to style and how to give plantings an edge with attention to color
The myth that soil fertility is always good
Sowing Beauty by James Hitchmough, the book Thomas returns to frequently
What Thomas would have changed about Planting in a Post-wild World including more diverse habitats, more examples of the principles he and Claudia developed, and land management strategies
How we can propagate horticulturists by sharing passion