Authors

Scott Ogden and Lauren Springer Ogden

Garden designers Scott Ogden and Lauren Springer Ogden lecture internationally, emphasizing plant diversity and ecological attunement. Their rich plant palette draws inspiration from their studies of plants in the wild in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Europe and South Africa. They have spoken at most major botanic gardens, public gardens and arboreta in the United States.

This husband-and-wife team has designed gardens and/or gardened professionally under a wide variety of climatic conditions in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Wyoming as well as in England, Ireland and Austria. Public projects include gardens at Naples Botanical Garden, Denver Botanic Gardens, Callaway Gardens and San Antonio Botanical Gardens.

Scott and Lauren have written several books in which they pioneer new plants and garden aesthetics. Their latest book, Plant-Driven Design, takes a bold look at garden design from a plant perspective, marrying site, region, plants and people while both embracing and transcending regionality. Other books include Garden Bulbs for the South (Timber Press 2007), Passionate Gardening (Fulcrum Publishing 2000), The Moonlit Garden (Taylor Publishing 1998), The Undaunted Garden (Fulcrum Publishing 1994), Waterwise Gardening (Prentice-Hall 1994) and Gardening Success With Difficult Soils (Taylor Publishing 1992.)

The Ogdens and their work have been featured on several television shows and in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Nature, Martha Stewart Living, Sunset and Horticulture. Awards include two American Horticultural Society book awards and a landscape design award from the Association of Professional Landscape Designers.

Before making horticulture and garden design their life’s work, Scott studied geology and palaeontology at Yale, and Lauren studied Spanish and Latin American literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She also received a master’s degree in horticulture from Pennsylvania State University. Passionate gardeners, propagators, plant hunters, fossil hounds and photographers, Scott and Lauren split their time between a small, jam-packed urban garden in Austin and an expansive naturalistic garden in Fort Collins. They have five children, and grow well over 3,000 species and selections of plants.