The Planetary Garden and Other Writings by Gilles Clément—French gardener, landscape designer, and theorist—has been among the influential texts of recent decades in redefining the relationship between humans and nature, particularly within the discipline of landscape architecture. In connection with Clément’s theories of the “Garden in Motion” and the “Third Landscape,” the book conceptualizes the Earth as a “planetary garden” and regards human beings not as absolute owners but as one of the actors within a complex network of living relations.

Adopting a scholarly book‑review approach, this study seeks to provide a concise introduction to the book and its theoretical background while evaluating the intellectual, practical, and cultural strengths and limitations of the concept of the “planetary garden.” The research is based on textual analysis of the book, consideration of the Persian translators’ notes, and a selective review of international critiques and interpretations of Clément’s thought.

The findings indicate that the book makes a significant contribution to expanding ecological imagination and advancing landscape discourse through its integration of theory and practice, its interdisciplinary holistic perspective, and its use of metaphorical language to render complex ecological and philosophical concepts more accessible. At the same time, the theory of the “planetary garden” presents notable limitations, including a degree of generalization, operational ambiguity, a tendency toward ecological romanticism, implicit Eurocentrism, and the difficulty of translating its concepts culturally into contexts such as Iran. The Persian translation of the book, supplemented with 691 footnotes, attempts to bridge this gap; however, this effort itself underscores the necessity of a critical localization of Clément’s ideas within Persian intellectual, cultural, and linguistic contexts.