Landscape designers have long understood the use of plants to provide beauty, aesthetic pleasure and visual stimulation while supporting a broad range of functional goals. However, the potential for plants in the landscape to elicit human involvement and provide mental stimulation and restoration is much less well understood.

This book meshes the art of planting design with an understanding of how humans respond to natural environments. Beginning with an understanding of human needs, preferences and responses to landscape, the author interprets the ways in which an understanding of the human-environment interaction can inform planting design. Many of the principles and techniques that may be used in planting design are beautifully illustrated in full colour with examples by leading landscape architects and designers from the United Kingdom, Europe, North America and Asia, including:

Andrea Cochran, Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture, San Francisco, CA Design Workshop Inc. Richard Hartlage, Land Morphology, Seattle, WA Shunmyo Masuno, Japan Landscape Consultants Ltd., Yokohama Piet Oudolf, Hummelo, The Netherlands Melody Redekop, Vancouver Christine Ten Eyck, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects Inc., Austin, TX Kongjian Yu, Turenscape Ltd., Beijing.

The book stimulates thought, provides new direction and assists the reader to find their own unique design voice. Because there are many valid processes and intentions for landscape design, the book is not intended to be overly prescriptive. Rather than presenting a strict design method and accompanying set of rules, Planting Design provides information, insight and inspiration as a basis for developing the individual designer’s own expression in this most challenging of art forms.

Landscape designers have long understood the use of plants to provide beauty, aesthetic pleasure and visual stimulation while supporting a broad range of functional goals. However, the potential for plants in the landscape to elicit human involvement and provide mental stimulation and restoration is much less well understood.

This book meshes the art of planting design with an understanding of how humans respond to natural environments. Beginning with an understanding of human needs, preferences and responses to landscape, the author interprets the ways in which an understanding of the human-environment interaction can inform planting design. Many of the principles and techniques that may be used in planting design are beautifully illustrated in full colour with examples by leading landscape architects and designers from the United Kingdom, Europe, North America and Asia, including:

Andrea Cochran, Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture, San Francisco, CA Design Workshop Inc. Richard Hartlage, Land Morphology, Seattle, WA Shunmyo Masuno, Japan Landscape Consultants Ltd., Yokohama Piet Oudolf, Hummelo, The Netherlands Melody Redekop, Vancouver Christine Ten Eyck, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects Inc., Austin, TX Kongjian Yu, Turenscape Ltd., Beijing.

The book stimulates thought, provides new direction and assists the reader to find their own unique design voice. Because there are many valid processes and intentions for landscape design, the book is not intended to be overly prescriptive. Rather than presenting a strict design method and accompanying set of rules, Planting Design provides information, insight and inspiration as a basis for developing the individual designer’s own expression in this most challenging of art forms.

`This book raises the theoretical level of rural studies to new heights…the Handbook of Rural Studies will likely become a key resource on the bookshelves of the next generation of graduate students...' - Gary Paul Green, University of Wisconsin-Madison

`This Handbook powerfully demonstrates that rural spaces, rural societies and rural natures are at the very forefront of critical social science endeavour. Read this book, become a rural social scientist' - Henry Buller, University of Exeter

`An outstandingly comprehensive review of theory, research and the study of rural questions…an essential reference for students, scholars, politicians, developers and rural activists' - Imre Kovach, Institute for Political Sciences, Budapest

`This collection is an essential addition to any rural scholar's library and will be a critical resource for both established rural scholars and rising graduate students interested in rural research topics' - Peter B Nelson, Middlebury College

`The Handbook of Rural Studies is a tour de force on changing rural people and places in a rapidly urbanizing global economy -- the most comprehensive interdisciplinary treatment of "rural" available anywhere. This is absolutely must reading for social scientists concerned about finding a prominent place for "rural" in scholarly discourse, institutional analysis, and public policy debates on the political economy of space' - Daniel T Lichter, Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University

The Handbook represents the vitality and theoretical innovation at work in rural studies. It shows how political economy and the 'cultural turn' have led to very significant new thinking in the cultural representations of: rurality; nature; sustainability; new economies; power and rurality; new consumerism; and exclusion and rurality.

It is organized in three sections: approaches to rural studies; rural research: key theoretical co-ordinates and new rural relations.

In a rich and textured discussion, the Handbook of Rural Studies explains the key moments in which the theorization of culture, nature, politics, agency, and space in rural contexts have transmitted ideas back into wider social science.

Landscape designers have long understood the use of plants to provide beauty, aesthetic pleasure and visual stimulation while supporting a broad range of functional goals. However, the potential for plants in the landscape to elicit human involvement and provide mental stimulation and restoration is much less well understood. This book meshes the art of planting design with an understanding of how humans respond to natural environments. Beginning with an understanding of human needs, preferences and responses to landscape, the author interprets the ways in which an understanding of the human-environment interaction can inform planting design. Many of the principles and techniques that may be used in planting design are beautifully illustrated in full colour with examples by leading landscape architects and designers from the United Kingdom, Europe, North America and Asia, including: Andrea Cochran, Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture, San Francisco, CADesign Workshop Inc.Richard Hartlage, Land Morphology, Seattle, WAShunmyo Masuno, Japan Landscape Consultants Ltd., YokohamaPiet Oudolf, Hummelo, The NetherlandsMelody Redekop, VancouverChristine Ten Eyck, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects Inc., Austin, TXKongjian Yu, Turenscape Ltd., Beijing.The book stimulates thought, provides new direction and assists the reader to find their own unique design voice. Because there are many valid processes and intentions for landscape design, the book is not intended to be overly prescriptive. Rather than presenting a strict design method and accompanying set of rules, Planting Design provides information, insight and inspiration as a basis for developing the individual designer’s own expression in this most challenging of art forms.

Landscape designers have long understood the use of plants to provide beauty, aesthetic pleasure and visual stimulation while supporting a broad range of functional goals. However, the potential for plants in the landscape to elicit human involvement and provide mental stimulation and restoration is much less well understood. This book meshes the art of planting design with an understanding of how humans respond to natural environments. Beginning with an understanding of human needs, preferences and responses to landscape, the author interprets the ways in which an understanding of the human-environment interaction can inform planting design. Many of the principles and techniques that may be used in planting design are beautifully illustrated in full colour with examples by leading landscape architects and designers from the United Kingdom, Europe, North America and Asia, including: Andrea Cochran, Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture, San Francisco, CADesign Workshop Inc.Richard Hartlage, Land Morphology, Seattle, WAShunmyo Masuno, Japan Landscape Consultants Ltd., YokohamaPiet Oudolf, Hummelo, The NetherlandsMelody Redekop, VancouverChristine Ten Eyck, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects Inc., Austin, TXKongjian Yu, Turenscape Ltd., Beijing.The book stimulates thought, provides new direction and assists the reader to find their own unique design voice. Because there are many valid processes and intentions for landscape design, the book is not intended to be overly prescriptive. Rather than presenting a strict design method and accompanying set of rules, Planting Design provides information, insight and inspiration as a basis for developing the individual designer’s own expression in this most challenging of art forms.

Religionless Spirituality claims that neither religion nor materialistic science satisfies the ache of the human heart for meaning or significance. We have experienced wonderful progress through the advances of science. Unfortunately, our achievements in many respects have become our atrocities. Since the Enlightenment, mechanistic science has insisted that it is only through reason that we can objectively prove anything, thereby excluding all subjective experience. This is the predominant paradigm by which capitalism and materialism prevail. Modern society has almost completely adopted this model. Because of this near total embrace, the environment of the human habitat is becoming more and more threatened. Through this model we infer that infinite growth can fit into a finite world. The ego is catered to as a consequence, but our spirit grows ever more impoverished. What use is verification by the human eye if the subjective experience of sight is excluded? Science explains but tells us nothing of experience. We need a spirit of transcendence, something that lies beyond matter, to explain the human construct. This is where spirituality enters. Religion, for its own ends, has politicized spirituality and co-opted for power and control. Individually, spirituality calls us to reclaim the birthright of Gods divinity alive within each of us. True spirituality calls us to look to the power within. True spirituality belongs to each individual. We must adopt a new paradigm, decontaminate ourselves from organized religion, and see our own individual divinity.

We humans are sparks of divinity in time. With imagination and intuition, we can sense the eternity of our participation in the oneness of consciousness. We are all interconnected and interrelated. Fr. Patrick Mooney, who communicates with God through nature, explores those connections. Dismissing sensational proofs for the presence of an all-embracive Creator, he argues God is in our midst. We only need to open the door of our hearts to find Him. This book seeks to answer questions such as: Has technology advanced too far for our own good? Why is human living such a holy and sacred thing? Why are so many people led astray by atheism? Is the coronavirus pandemic the work of humans or the work of God?All life is holy and sacred because it is governed by one supreme consciousness. The serenity and peace that subhuman species proclaim in abundance can be found by the human species when we hammer it out through our connection to the natural world. Discover the consciousness of our spirituality and a new paradigm of living to work toward a brighter future with the wisdom in The Spiritual Impoverishment of Western Civilization.

The West has become an expert in invasion and war-not because of threats to the home front but to exploit natural resources that do not belong to us. The time has come for individual Christians to fire their consciences instead of guns. A passion of conscience is the only rational way to subvert our national differences. Patrick Mooney explores how the spirituality of nonviolent resistance can bring us to a better place in this book. Arguing that violence has not made us happy, he shares insights such as: Christ told us, You find by giving away. We become more by giving ourselves to one another. We in the West have huge obligations toward poorer nations because of all the goods we have stolen through imperialism. We are taught that satiation of the ego is our only purpose. Contrary to natural law, the profit motive has become the driving force of our lives. The crisis facing our planet stems from our failure to differentiate between religion and spirituality on the one hand, and religion and politics on the other. Social inequality arises exactly because we have failed to balance the relationship between materiality and spirituality.

Sadly, western civilization has seemingly lost its sense of Christian identity and heritage. In recent decades, humanity has become so indoctrinated by the atheistic paradigm that our matrix is controlled by corporate greed and competition rather than cooperation and compassion.While reflecting on a world that is ever changing, Patrick Mooney shares essays that explore the effect of atheism on a variety of topics that include sexuality, the most binary aspect of humanity that is love, the courage of conviction, endowments and the elite as it relates to education, the reality of death, an inner-city Dublin schoolmistress, and much more. Throughout his writings, Mooney reminds us that although the modern world has brought us to a moral impasse, it is possible to adopt the spirituality that Christ preached, embrace our destiny to be spiritual, and refine our higher selves to search for and find meaning and divine purpose in our lives.The Actualization of Self-Transcendence is a collection of personal essays that shares a priest’s candid reflections on the effects of the atheistic paradigm on the modern world.

Landscape designers have long understood the use of plants to provide beauty, aesthetic pleasure and visual stimulation while supporting a broad range of functional goals. However, the potential for plants in the landscape to elicit human involvement and provide mental stimulation and restoration is much less well understood.

This book meshes the art of planting design with an understanding of how humans respond to natural environments. Beginning with an understanding of human needs, preferences and responses to landscape, the author interprets the ways in which an understanding of the human-environment interaction can inform planting design. Many of the principles and techniques that may be used in planting design are beautifully illustrated in full colour with examples by leading landscape architects and designers from the United Kingdom, Europe, North America and Asia, including:

Andrea Cochran, Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture, San Francisco, CA Design Workshop Inc. Richard Hartlage, Land Morphology, Seattle, WA Shunmyo Masuno, Japan Landscape Consultants Ltd., Yokohama Piet Oudolf, Hummelo, The Netherlands Melody Redekop, Vancouver Christine Ten Eyck, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects Inc., Austin, TX Kongjian Yu, Turenscape Ltd., Beijing.

The book stimulates thought, provides new direction and assists the reader to find their own unique design voice. Because there are many valid processes and intentions for landscape design, the book is not intended to be overly prescriptive. Rather than presenting a strict design method and accompanying set of rules, Planting Design provides information, insight and inspiration as a basis for developing the individual designer’s own expression in this most challenging of art forms.

Landscape designers have long understood the use of plants to provide beauty, aesthetic pleasure and visual stimulation while supporting a broad range of functional goals. However, the potential for plants in the landscape to elicit human involvement and provide mental stimulation and restoration is much less well understood.

This book meshes the art of planting design with an understanding of how humans respond to natural environments. Beginning with an understanding of human needs, preferences and responses to landscape, the author interprets the ways in which an understanding of the human-environment interaction can inform planting design. Many of the principles and techniques that may be used in planting design are beautifully illustrated in full colour with examples by leading landscape architects and designers from the United Kingdom, Europe, North America and Asia, including:

Andrea Cochran, Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture, San Francisco, CA Design Workshop Inc. Richard Hartlage, Land Morphology, Seattle, WA Shunmyo Masuno, Japan Landscape Consultants Ltd., Yokohama Piet Oudolf, Hummelo, The Netherlands Melody Redekop, Vancouver Christine Ten Eyck, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects Inc., Austin, TX Kongjian Yu, Turenscape Ltd., Beijing.

The book stimulates thought, provides new direction and assists the reader to find their own unique design voice. Because there are many valid processes and intentions for landscape design, the book is not intended to be overly prescriptive. Rather than presenting a strict design method and accompanying set of rules, Planting Design provides information, insight and inspiration as a basis for developing the individual designer’s own expression in this most challenging of art forms.

`This book raises the theoretical level of rural studies to new heights…the Handbook of Rural Studies will likely become a key resource on the bookshelves of the next generation of graduate students...' - Gary Paul Green, University of Wisconsin-Madison

`This Handbook powerfully demonstrates that rural spaces, rural societies and rural natures are at the very forefront of critical social science endeavour. Read this book, become a rural social scientist' - Henry Buller, University of Exeter

`An outstandingly comprehensive review of theory, research and the study of rural questions…an essential reference for students, scholars, politicians, developers and rural activists' - Imre Kovach, Institute for Political Sciences, Budapest

`This collection is an essential addition to any rural scholar's library and will be a critical resource for both established rural scholars and rising graduate students interested in rural research topics' - Peter B Nelson, Middlebury College

`The Handbook of Rural Studies is a tour de force on changing rural people and places in a rapidly urbanizing global economy -- the most comprehensive interdisciplinary treatment of "rural" available anywhere. This is absolutely must reading for social scientists concerned about finding a prominent place for "rural" in scholarly discourse, institutional analysis, and public policy debates on the political economy of space' - Daniel T Lichter, Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University

The Handbook represents the vitality and theoretical innovation at work in rural studies. It shows how political economy and the 'cultural turn' have led to very significant new thinking in the cultural representations of: rurality; nature; sustainability; new economies; power and rurality; new consumerism; and exclusion and rurality.

It is organized in three sections: approaches to rural studies; rural research: key theoretical co-ordinates and new rural relations.

In a rich and textured discussion, the Handbook of Rural Studies explains the key moments in which the theorization of culture, nature, politics, agency, and space in rural contexts have transmitted ideas back into wider social science.

Landscape designers have long understood the use of plants to provide beauty, aesthetic pleasure and visual stimulation while supporting a broad range of functional goals. However, the potential for plants in the landscape to elicit human involvement and provide mental stimulation and restoration is much less well understood. This book meshes the art of planting design with an understanding of how humans respond to natural environments. Beginning with an understanding of human needs, preferences and responses to landscape, the author interprets the ways in which an understanding of the human-environment interaction can inform planting design. Many of the principles and techniques that may be used in planting design are beautifully illustrated in full colour with examples by leading landscape architects and designers from the United Kingdom, Europe, North America and Asia, including: Andrea Cochran, Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture, San Francisco, CADesign Workshop Inc.Richard Hartlage, Land Morphology, Seattle, WAShunmyo Masuno, Japan Landscape Consultants Ltd., YokohamaPiet Oudolf, Hummelo, The NetherlandsMelody Redekop, VancouverChristine Ten Eyck, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects Inc., Austin, TXKongjian Yu, Turenscape Ltd., Beijing.The book stimulates thought, provides new direction and assists the reader to find their own unique design voice. Because there are many valid processes and intentions for landscape design, the book is not intended to be overly prescriptive. Rather than presenting a strict design method and accompanying set of rules, Planting Design provides information, insight and inspiration as a basis for developing the individual designer’s own expression in this most challenging of art forms.

Landscape designers have long understood the use of plants to provide beauty, aesthetic pleasure and visual stimulation while supporting a broad range of functional goals. However, the potential for plants in the landscape to elicit human involvement and provide mental stimulation and restoration is much less well understood. This book meshes the art of planting design with an understanding of how humans respond to natural environments. Beginning with an understanding of human needs, preferences and responses to landscape, the author interprets the ways in which an understanding of the human-environment interaction can inform planting design. Many of the principles and techniques that may be used in planting design are beautifully illustrated in full colour with examples by leading landscape architects and designers from the United Kingdom, Europe, North America and Asia, including: Andrea Cochran, Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture, San Francisco, CADesign Workshop Inc.Richard Hartlage, Land Morphology, Seattle, WAShunmyo Masuno, Japan Landscape Consultants Ltd., YokohamaPiet Oudolf, Hummelo, The NetherlandsMelody Redekop, VancouverChristine Ten Eyck, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects Inc., Austin, TXKongjian Yu, Turenscape Ltd., Beijing.The book stimulates thought, provides new direction and assists the reader to find their own unique design voice. Because there are many valid processes and intentions for landscape design, the book is not intended to be overly prescriptive. Rather than presenting a strict design method and accompanying set of rules, Planting Design provides information, insight and inspiration as a basis for developing the individual designer’s own expression in this most challenging of art forms.

Religionless Spirituality claims that neither religion nor materialistic science satisfies the ache of the human heart for meaning or significance. We have experienced wonderful progress through the advances of science. Unfortunately, our achievements in many respects have become our atrocities. Since the Enlightenment, mechanistic science has insisted that it is only through reason that we can objectively prove anything, thereby excluding all subjective experience. This is the predominant paradigm by which capitalism and materialism prevail. Modern society has almost completely adopted this model. Because of this near total embrace, the environment of the human habitat is becoming more and more threatened. Through this model we infer that infinite growth can fit into a finite world. The ego is catered to as a consequence, but our spirit grows ever more impoverished. What use is verification by the human eye if the subjective experience of sight is excluded? Science explains but tells us nothing of experience. We need a spirit of transcendence, something that lies beyond matter, to explain the human construct. This is where spirituality enters. Religion, for its own ends, has politicized spirituality and co-opted for power and control. Individually, spirituality calls us to reclaim the birthright of Gods divinity alive within each of us. True spirituality calls us to look to the power within. True spirituality belongs to each individual. We must adopt a new paradigm, decontaminate ourselves from organized religion, and see our own individual divinity.

We humans are sparks of divinity in time. With imagination and intuition, we can sense the eternity of our participation in the oneness of consciousness. We are all interconnected and interrelated. Fr. Patrick Mooney, who communicates with God through nature, explores those connections. Dismissing sensational proofs for the presence of an all-embracive Creator, he argues God is in our midst. We only need to open the door of our hearts to find Him. This book seeks to answer questions such as: Has technology advanced too far for our own good? Why is human living such a holy and sacred thing? Why are so many people led astray by atheism? Is the coronavirus pandemic the work of humans or the work of God?All life is holy and sacred because it is governed by one supreme consciousness. The serenity and peace that subhuman species proclaim in abundance can be found by the human species when we hammer it out through our connection to the natural world. Discover the consciousness of our spirituality and a new paradigm of living to work toward a brighter future with the wisdom in The Spiritual Impoverishment of Western Civilization.

The West has become an expert in invasion and war-not because of threats to the home front but to exploit natural resources that do not belong to us. The time has come for individual Christians to fire their consciences instead of guns. A passion of conscience is the only rational way to subvert our national differences. Patrick Mooney explores how the spirituality of nonviolent resistance can bring us to a better place in this book. Arguing that violence has not made us happy, he shares insights such as: Christ told us, You find by giving away. We become more by giving ourselves to one another. We in the West have huge obligations toward poorer nations because of all the goods we have stolen through imperialism. We are taught that satiation of the ego is our only purpose. Contrary to natural law, the profit motive has become the driving force of our lives. The crisis facing our planet stems from our failure to differentiate between religion and spirituality on the one hand, and religion and politics on the other. Social inequality arises exactly because we have failed to balance the relationship between materiality and spirituality.

Sadly, western civilization has seemingly lost its sense of Christian identity and heritage. In recent decades, humanity has become so indoctrinated by the atheistic paradigm that our matrix is controlled by corporate greed and competition rather than cooperation and compassion.While reflecting on a world that is ever changing, Patrick Mooney shares essays that explore the effect of atheism on a variety of topics that include sexuality, the most binary aspect of humanity that is love, the courage of conviction, endowments and the elite as it relates to education, the reality of death, an inner-city Dublin schoolmistress, and much more. Throughout his writings, Mooney reminds us that although the modern world has brought us to a moral impasse, it is possible to adopt the spirituality that Christ preached, embrace our destiny to be spiritual, and refine our higher selves to search for and find meaning and divine purpose in our lives.The Actualization of Self-Transcendence is a collection of personal essays that shares a priest’s candid reflections on the effects of the atheistic paradigm on the modern world.