W. Gary Smith’s work includes Karst Circle, for the Art in Public Places program in Austin, Texas; Peirce’s Woods, an “art-form garden of native plants” at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania; and Enchanted Woods at Winterthur in Delaware. Learn more about Smith and his work at www.wgarysmithdesign.com.

MEET THE ARTIST: W. Gary Smith

“Looking at the native landscape as inspiration for art and design, I like to find the intrinsic shapes, patterns, and forms created by basic natural processes—the dispersal of seeds by wind and birds, the deposition and erosion of soils in a streambed, the push and pull of different plants finding space where they can coexist.” –W. Gary Smith

New England Wild Flower Society is proud to host the region’s first public installation by renowned landscape architect and environmental artist W. Gary Smith.

For ART GOES WILD: Innovation with Native Plants, Garden in the Woods itself is the artist’s medium, where a sequence of sculptural installations shows how native plants and ecosystems can inspire art—and also provide some basic ideas for garden design. “Artistic abstraction is a new frontier in the native plants movement,” Smith says. “A composition of native plants can read clearly as a work of art, yet still have all the ecological values that native plants bring to the landscape.” ART GOES WILD invites you to explore artistic expressions inspired by the forms inherent in the natural world, and to bring these innovations into your garden at home.