The push toward naturalistic landscapes can be traced to Europe’s emphasis on meadow, matrix, and graphic planting design. The history of landscape architecture and its influence on contemporary trends are explored in a new book, The Authentic Garden: Naturalistic and Contemporary Landscape Design (The Monacelli Press, $50), written by garden designers Richard Hartlage and Sandy Fischer, principals of the firm Land Morphology. Organized into thematic chapters, the book features more than 60 recently designed gardens—both residential and commercial—by top talents including OLIN, Christine Ten Eyck, Thomas Woltz, and Ron Lutsko. These projects exemplify the current movement that encourages the use of ecologically sound, perennial, and sustainable plantings.

For a Cape Cod, Massachusetts, garden designed by Keith LeBlanc, Viburnum x carlcephalum —the plant with snowball-shaped flowers—helps to create a visual distinction between the garden and the surrounding landscape.

Randy Allworth kept the plantings at a Seattle residence minimal so as not to detract from the site’s interesting grade changes.

A New Jersey project by Land Morphology includes 10,000 plugs of bamboo grass in four shades. With the addition of clipped hornbeam pillars, the rolling berm recalls a giant caterpillar.

A wood footbridge runs through an 80-acre meadow by Land Morphology at Longwood Gardens in Delaware, providing visitors a great vantage point from which to view the design, meant to represent what an Eastern seaboard meadow might have looked like before the arrival of European settlers.

Little bluestem covers the roof of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s visitor center, designed by Weiss/Manfredi and HMWhite.

At a contemporary residence in Northern California, Bernard Trainor used stone walls, a pool, and soft plantings to frame the dramatic views of the Carmel Valley.

For the pool area of a desert home, Steve Martino planted palo verde, Agave weberi, andopuntia to conceal a driveway while showcasing the mountain views.