FEATURE
Shrubby Wonder, and Shrouded in Light:
A Conversation with Kevin Philip Williams
My mind melted the first time I saw a thicket of rabbitbrush and sagebrush shrouded in harsh western American light. I understood that these were Other things in a place very different from anything I had yet experienced. The bluffs and washes frothed with silver and teal, breaking against cinnamon earth and cresting in charcoal and gold. Wading into the tumult and walking among the glowing shrubs was intoxicating. This was a cartoon world; a type of magic; a wish. […] I was standing at the edge of the vast shrubland known as The Great Sagebrush Sea, and it was raging. This was my gateway to shrublands. I started to notice them everywhere that I traveled. They fill deserts, surround forests, permeate grasslands, and hold back the oceans. They are expansive and liminal, permanent and temporary.
—Introduction to Shrouded in Light, p. 16
Lucien Meadows
Kevin, thank you for agreeing to talk with Legacy about wonder and shrublands as a horticulturist and designer with Denver Botanic Gardens and as the co-author (with Michael Guidi) of the new book Shrouded in Light: Naturalistic Planting Inspired by Wild Shrublands. Congratulations on that publication!
Kevin Philip Williams
Thank you, Lucien! Shrubs and shrublands have this almost magnetic pull—something both Michael and I felt deeply when we first encountered them. When we moved to Denver from New York (separately, and coincidentally, around the same time), and began working at Denver Botanic Gardens, we found ourselves immersed in a completely new world. The plants, the geology, the climate—everything demanded attention, but it was the shrublands we saw while hiking and exploring the region that really captivated us.
Lucien
I’m sure you get asked this question often, but: why shrubs/shrublands?
Kevin
It didn’t take long for the conversations at work between Michael and myself to turn to shrubs. As stewards of regionally focused plant collections, we wondered why shrubs and shrublands weren’t more celebrated, either in our designs or in the broader aesthetic of naturalistic gardening. Shrubs seemed to exist on the periphery, appreciated but rarely given the spotlight.
We also saw a gap in representation. While there are wonderful books available on naturalistic garden design inspired by grasslands or woodlands, shrublands were often reduced to a mention—an acknowledgment of their potential, but not a full exploration. This omission felt significant. Shrublands are transitional, complex spaces, layered with life, and their ecological importance is immense.
These intricate spaces provide food, shelter, refuge, and protection for innumerable other creatures. By accepting the deep, dizzying, and disorienting aesthetics of shrublands we are accepting the aesthetics of life. We are accepting a deeper understanding of what beauty is, beyond what just makes us happy. To make something really beautiful and unique for this world we need to think about what other beings find beautiful. We need to allow and get lost in non-human messes.
—Shrouded in Light, p. 57
Eriodictyon californicum (California yerba santa) dreamily light-paints the hillsides with lilac purple post-fire blooms while the rest of the landscape is still in snags. Dry Lakes Ridge Botanical Area, Los Padres National Forest, California. Photo by Bryant Baker.
Lucien
What—or who—would you define as “a shrub”?
Kevin
The most universal definition of a shrub is a multi-stemmed, wood-producing plant, but shrubs are dynamic entities, shape-shifters that thrive in spaces of transition and ambiguity. They defy rigid categorization, embodying resilience and adaptability.
Shrublands are everywhere, and depending on where you find yourself, you might call them any one of myriad names: boscage, bramble, briar, brush, bush, carr, cedar scrub, ceniza, cerrado, chaparral, copse, fynbos, garrigue, heath, karoo, kwongan, macchia, mallee, maquis, matorral, monte, moorland, petran, phrygana, pindan, pocosin, restinga, roee, sand sage prairie, scrub, scrubland, shinnery, shrub swamp, shrubland, shrub-steppe, strandveld, thicket, and thorn are just some.
—Shrouded in Light, p. 70
Strata of shrubs and moisture-loving forbs in Routt National Forest, Colorado. Photo by Kevin Philip Williams.
Kevin
Although some plants are genetically predisposed to shrubbiness, whether or not they take on a shrubby form can also be affected by external factors like weather, disturbance and time. Some tropical shrubs will never be able to develop wood in cold temperate climates where they won’t live through winter. Sometimes, when large, canopy-forming trees are cut to the ground, they respond by throwing up dozens of smaller stems, taking on a new shrubby form for decades before becoming a tree again, if they ever do. Some shrub colonies are so large that they can swallow mountainsides, while others are so small that you need a magnifying glass to inspect their branching.
Shrubs reflect transformation. They show us that form is fluid, that life is a process of constant change. Shrubs remind us that identity is contextual, shaped by time, circumstance, and interaction.
The word “shrub” finds its origins in the Proto-Indo-European word sker or ker, meaning to cut. Sker was also used in the creation of the words scrap, shard, carnal, carnage, and scrape. Could this mean that shrubs cut and scrape, do they separate or are they separate? Or do they protect? Shroud is of Old English origin, but also finds its origins in the base terms cut or shred. Is a shroud a shrub? Is a shrubland a shroudland? Do they cover, encase, or envelope? Where is the carnage of a shrub directed? What does it shield?
—Shrouded in Light, p. 42
Lucien
You and Michael describe shrublands as “plants in a quantum state” and beings “in the process of becoming.” Shrubs are nonbinary, in a sense. They stand between grasses and trees as both/and and also as neither. Whether interpreters work in natural, historical, or cultural sites, why should we attend to what and who exist in these middle, and often marginalized, spaces?
Kevin
Marginalized spaces are often the most fertile grounds for creativity, resilience, and connection. They’re places of transition, where boundaries blur and new possibilities emerge. Shrublands exemplify this. Attending to these marginalized spaces—and the life within them—teaches us to honor complexity and interconnectedness. Shrublands show us that richness often lies in ambiguity, in the in-between. By focusing on these often-overlooked ecosystems, we not only deepen our understanding of nature but also gain insights into human cultures, relationships, and the ways we navigate our own liminal spaces.
We want to show you possibilities, not certainties, and above all, inspiration, not instruction.
—Shrouded in Light, p. 21
Spring snowmelt and seasonal storms can adorn dry montane systems with a profusion of blooms. At the edge of a dark forest, continuous bands of Artemisia tridentata ssp. vaseyana (mountain big sagebrush) punctuated with the upright pale yellow-flowered Eriogonum umbellatum (sulphurflower buckwheat) and airy pink Geranium viscosissimum (sticky geranium) in the Gore Range near Silverthorne, Colorado. Photo by Michael Guidi.
Kevin
In many ways, shrublands represent an alternative culture in garden design, one that invites exploration of unconventional inspirations—abstract art, extreme music, queer ecology. Shrubs act as skeleton keys, unlocking possibilities for design and thought that go beyond the conventional. They embody resilience, versatility, and ecological vitality, all of which resonate deeply with the moment we’re in and challenge us to see the world differently.
Shrubs can hide or reveal, be the thicket or clearing, create a line or the outline, stand alone or weave together. Learning to read the landscape, to read shrublands, may require reading many genres in many languages, but the stories are familiar. We have known them since the beginning of our time.
—Shrouded in Light, p. 74
Exuberance and rest. Mass and void. Finding the balance and tension between positive and negative space is crucial in life. In this desert scene, the solid paddles of the prickly pear offer visual brakes, catching and holding the eye, while the erupting, lanky forms of the ocotillo release it back into the fine-leaved haziness of the full composition. Depending on their frequency and surrounding plant communities, the stable forms of shrubs can act as either points of interest and excitement or areas of rest and respite. Photo on left by Michael Guidi, and artistic rendering on right by Kevin Philip Williams and Michael Guidi.
Lucien
Shrubs disrupt linear notions of space. You and Michael share, for example, how willow shrublands are increasing over Arctic tundra as permafrost thaws, and shrubs are replacing forests in the American West as wildfires increase in frequency and intensity. Might shrubs also disrupt linear notions of time?
Kevin
Yes, absolutely. Shrubs and shrublands are places where time folds and overlaps. They hold the past in their roots and deadwood, the present in their vibrant leaves and flowers, and the future in their shoots and seeds. Many shrubs are masters of renewal, regrowing after fire, grazing, or cutting. In these cycles, they remind us that time isn’t a straight line. It’s a process of regeneration, decay, and transformation—a reminder that endings are often beginnings.
As new norms subsume the old, shrubs will continue to grow and thrive. As society advances into post-capitalism and our hastily produced infrastructure crumbles and is abandoned, the outlines of shrubs with which we have surrounded our homes will flourish and spread, creating shrubdivisions and shruburbs, the subdivision-shaped shrublands of our own making. A skeletal version of an old civilization. A sympoietic suburban scrub. If the environments that we control, and the gardens as we create them, make up the matter of our reality, then shrubs are the anti-matter.
—Shrouded in Light, p. 185
Mixed chaparral with Ceanothus megacarpus (bigpod ceanothus) in full bloom in California, looking as if the shrubs themselves were the source of the light. Photo by Bryant Baker.
Lucien
We are in a challenging moment on many levels: socially, politically, environmentally, culturally, and more. What would you most like us to learn from shrublands?
Kevin
In a period marked by ecological crisis and cultural fragmentation, shrublands offer a model of coexistence. Shrubs thrive in places that might seem inhospitable, and by doing so, create conditions that help to facilitate other life. They demonstrate that true strength and resilience arises from the partnerships that we make.
Does a shrub need to make wood or can it be ephemeral? We should always inspect our need to classify organisms as human impulses, not biological truths, especially when our classification only serves to inhibit deeper knowledge about other creatures. […] Is a coral reef a zoological shrubland building stone instead of wood? What would it mean to create a shrubland with other partners?
—Shrouded in Light, p. 170
This sphagnum glade minefield in Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia, greeted us with hummocks of Vaccinium macrocarpon (cranberry), Rubus hispidus (swamp dewberry), and a warning of unexploded ordnance. The floating smoky seedheads of Eriophorum virginicum (tawny cottongrass) and incendiary autumn color imply detonation. Photo by Michael Guidi.
The interstitial forbs of a montane sagebrush shrub-steppe featuring the brick-red stems of Artemisia carruthii (Carruth’s sagewort), the green lightning of Argemone hispida (rough prickly poppy), and the yellow pop of a street sign in Salida, Colorado. Photo by Kevin Philip Williams.
Kevin
Shrubs also encourage us to approach life with purpose and a sense of profound intentionality. They have shown me the value of slowing down, observing with care, and appreciating the intricate beauty all around us.
Lucien
This sounds like an approach of wonder, when wonder is to witness how we connect and relate. Throughout Shrouded in Light, you and Michael combine scientific description with poetic meditations. You move across genres to include photographs, paintings, digital drawings, and more. You reach toward shrublands not to grasp and understand but, rather, to be with. Why (or how) do shrubs invite such wonder?
Kevin
Shrubs resist simplification. They don’t fit neatly into categories, and they don’t reveal themselves all at once. This makes them perfect invitations to wonder. Their forms are intricate and wholly unknowable. Their relationships are dynamic and complex. To truly observe a shrub is to immerse yourself in its layers, to sit in speculation, and to contemplate everything and nothing. By presenting impressions of shrubs and shrublands through a variety of mediums, we hoped to invite readers to engage with them in a deeper, more intuitive way. The more we draw from diverse and inclusive influences in our work, the more extraordinary our creations can become. These elements spark personal connections and give people the freedom to bring their full, authentic selves into their work. Shrubs, in their complexity, teach us to embrace intricacy and nuance, and give us permission to create in a way that is as deep, complex, and personal as possible.
Shrubs can hide or reveal, be the thicket or clearing, create a line or the outline, stand alone or weave together. Learning to read the landscape, to read shrublands, may require reading many genres in many languages, but the stories are familiar. We have known them since the beginning of our time.
—Shrouded in Light, p. 74
Kevin
In truth, everything holds the potential to inspire this approach to wonder, if we allow ourselves to be open to it.
Lucien
How would you suggest that interpreters (be they in natural, historical, or cultural sites) inspire wonder within themselves and with their visitors?
Kevin
The most important thing is to trust your audience. Don’t dilute the content or underestimate their intelligence and curiosity. People are capable of engaging deeply with complex ideas if you invite them to do so.
Challenge visitors to see the world from new perspectives. Introduce them to unfamiliar cultures, concepts, and connections, and encourage them to internalize what they’ve learned and carry it forward. The internet and smartphones have made it easier than ever to access references, so don’t shy away from pushing boundaries.
At the same time, remain open to learning from your audience. Let their questions and insights shape your understanding, space and content. Wonder grows in spaces of reciprocity.
Finally, embrace the full range of emotions and experiences that people bring with them. Don’t try to force them into a specific state or category that aligns with your mission. Allow space for complexity and transformation—both in yourself and in your visitors.
Lupinus argentus (silvery lupine) blending with Artemisia tridentata (big sagebrush) below the Wind River Range in the Bridger Wilderness, Wyoming. This area, part of the Great Sagebrush Sea, is quintessential shrub-steppe, stretching across rolling plains as far as the eye can see, interrupted only by mountains or canyons. Photo by Kevin Philip Williams.
Holding the image of a shrub in our thoughts affects and infects our own language, thoughts, and expectations.
—Shrouded in Light, p. 63
Quercus laevis (turkey oak) in a disorientingly even band of Pinus palustris (longleaf pine) in the Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, South Carolina. Photo by Michael Guidi.
Lucien
Wonder is only one letter away from wander, and you and Michael invite us to wonder and wander beside you among these shrublands you describe as “mazes,” “fractal microcosms,” and “intricate spaces.” Before we go—and thank you again for this conversation—why is it important for us all to wander and wonder amid the “dizzying and disorienting”?
Kevin
My pleasure, Lucien. Wandering is an antidote to certainty. It invites us to let go of control and embrace the unknown. Shrublands, with their intricate pathways and layered ecosystems, are ideal places to practice this.
Wandering isn’t aimless—it’s intentional exploration. It reminds us that there are multiple ways to reach a goal, multiple paths to understanding. Mazes don’t have a single solution, and neither does life. By wandering, we learn to see complexity not as a challenge to overcome but as a strength.
Shrubs exist like all organisms, by transforming energy into the sinuous threads of life, but their efforts are only possible because of their extensive partnerships with other creatures. […] From the open sagebrush steppe to the chaos of mixed shrub ecotone, shrublands inspire and evoke human reaction; let us take this as an invitation for partnership. Let’s bring shrubby chaos into the garden and be shrouded in its light.
—Shrouded in Light, p. 18–19
