The plant community: a model for horticultural thought and practice in the 21st century?

This paper discusses the idea of the plant community as a new design model for horticultural planting. It traces the origins of academic ideas about how semi-natural plant communities function in ecological terms and how increasingly the focus of research on these has been to understand the mechanics of change. The paper explores the advantages and disadvantages of horticulturally based plant communities, and looks at how key variables such as plant density and diversity, structural layers, and soil productivity affect both functional properties and also human aesthetic responses to the appearance of communities.