Daily Archives: September 29, 2022

Wednesday, October 5, 7:00 pm – Plant Life Book Talk, Live and Online

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Rosetta S. Elkin reveals that planting a tree can either be one of the ultimate offerings to thriving on this planet, or one of the most extreme perversions of human agency over it. Plant Life exposes the relationship between human and plant life, revealing that afforestation is not an ecological act: rather, it is deliberately political and distressingly social. This Arnold Arboretum sponsored talk will take place live and online on October 5 at 7 pm.

Using three supracontinental case studies—scientific forestry in the American prairies, colonial control in Africa’s Sahelian grasslands, and Chinese efforts to control and administer territory—Elkin explores the political implications of plant life as a tool of environmentalism. By exposing the human tendency to fix or solve environmental matters by exploiting other organisms, this work exposes the relationship between human and plant life, revealing that afforestation is not an ecological act: rather, it is deliberately political and distressingly social. 

Plant Life ultimately reveals that afforestation cannot offset deforestation, an important distinction that sheds light on current environmental trends that suggest we can plant our way out of climate change. By radicalizing what conservation protects and by framing plants in their total aliveness, Elkin shows that there are many kinds of life—not just our own—to consider when advancing environmental policy. 

Rosetta S. Elkin is associate professor and academic director of landscape architecture at Pratt Institute, principal of Practice Landscape, and research associate at the Harvard Arnold Arboretum. She is author of Tiny Taxonomy: Individual Plants in Landscape Architecture. 

This event will also be presented in-person at the Arboretum’s Weld Hill Research Building at 1300 Centre Street, Boston, MA 02131. To sign up for the in-person event, click here. To sign up for the virtual presentation, click here.

Thursday, October 6, 5:00 am – The 19th Century Garden – Boating Lakes and Backhanders, Online

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The Gardens Trust’s third series of lectures on Victorian gardens continues on October 6 with Ben Dark’s exploration of Boating Lakes and Backhanders: J.J. Sexby and the Politics of the Public Park.

Lieutenant Colonel J. J. Sexby, Chief Officer of the London County Council’s Parks Department, has been credited with creating the model for twentieth century public parks. To contemporaries it seemed that at a wave of his magic wand ‘bandstands blossom forth, lakes sparkle, shelters spring up, delightful refreshment rooms, not to mention drinking fountains, abound and playgrounds leap into joyful existence’. But these features were far from universally popular. Contemporary landscape architects accused Sexby of being ‘the merest amateur’ and advocates for naturalistic planting derided the Parks Department for their ‘ugly tea gardens’. Meanwhile, behind the Council’s rockeries and ‘Old English’ gardens lay a bitter soup of political infighting, official corruption and bureaucratic incompetence.

This talk will re-examine Sexby and the parks he created in the light of the economic, aesthetic and moral arguments that raged around him, and will argue that his true genius has long been misunderstood.

Ben Dark is an author, gardener and horticultural journalist with a particular interest in the history of plants and landscapes. His book The Grove: A Natural Odyssey in 19½ Front Gardens (Octopus, 2022) used the plants of a single street in South London to weave together stories of the city, its people and their flowers and was called ‘the best gardening book of 2022’ by the Daily Telegraph, as well as being praised by The Sunday Times, the New Statesman and The Mail on Sunday.

Alongside writing Ben also hosts the award-winning Garden Log podcast, providing a discursive look at the culture, literature and practice of gardening. He has a degree in history from Bristol University and an MA in garden and landscape history from the University of London, writing his dissertation on J. J. Sexby and London’s Municipal Public Parks, 1889-1910.

£5 each or all 6 for £30. Register at Eventbrite HERE. The recording will be available for a week following the Zoom lecture.

Mondays, October 3, October 17, & November 7, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm – 24th Annual Landscape Design Portfolio Series, Online

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Three innovative and much-honored landscape architects discuss their signature projects, unique working methods, and design philosophies-while sharing transformative stories of people and places. For these designers, a respect for history informs and inspires the creative process. This online New York Botanical Garden Series on October 3, October 17, & November 7, will be presented at 6:30 Eastern time on Zoom. $95 for the series. Register here at www.nybg.org

The first talk will be by Elizabeth Kennedy entitled At the Crossroads: Socially Just Landscapes. From her office in New York’s Brooklyn Naval Yard, Elizabeth Kennedy leads EKLA PLLC, a collaborative, interdisciplinary social justice practice noted for excellence in innovative landscape preservation, development, and management. For Kennedy, design inspiration can come from anywhere-even the quality of light and shade. Kennedy’s talk will illustrate how her projects-including the Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn, the African Burial Ground National Monument in Lower Manhattan, the Inwood Sacred Site, the Peninsula Live-Work Campus in the Bronx, and Buffalo’s Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor-exemplify landscape architecture’s potential to afford a broader understanding of place and identity.

The daughter of an architect, Elizabeth Kennedy, FASLA, knew at 14 that she wanted to be a landscape architect. She studied landscape architecture at Cornell University and founded her own firm in 1994, with the goal of collaborating with mission-driven non-profit organizations to serve communities. Much honored for her distinguished work in sustainability, Kennedy is an ASLA Fellow and the recipient of 2022’s prestigious Annual Landscape Architecture Foundation Medal.

On October 17, you will hear Julie Bargmann speak on Troubled Beauty: A Manifesto for Ugly Duckling Landscapes. Known for her innovative approaches to design and regeneration of toxic industrial sites and degraded urban landscapes, Julie Bargmann turns “ugly duckling” sites into swans. Her process begins with site forensics-finding the stories of place and then surmounting innumerable obstacles with her unique blend of fearlessness, experimentation, common sense and restraint in order to produce award-winning work. She will discuss a community-based reclamation project of an abandoned coal works; a corporate campus refashioned within an abandoned Navy yard; an obsolete water supply station reinterpreted for a small private garden; and a privately funded public park offered as a sign of optimism in a disinvested Detroit neighborhood.

Julie Bargmann is the Founder and Principal of D.I.R.T. Studio and a Professor Emerita at the University of Virginia Department of Landscape Architecture. She is the Inaugural Laureate of the 2021 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Bargmann received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Carnegie Mellon and a MLA from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

The final talk on November 7 will be by Roderick Wyllie and James A. Lord on Supergreen: Gardens, Placemaking, and Infrastructure. Roderick Wyllie and James A. Lord, founding partners of Surfacedesign, a San Francisco-based landscape architecture studio, challenge conventional approaches to design by asking novel questions and listening to a site and its users. By doing so, Wyllie and Lord focus on cultivating a sense of connection between the built and the natural world, inviting people to engage with the landscape in new ways. Together, the two landscape architects will present work that ranges in location and scale, from civic projects to intimate residential gardens, including Auckland International Airport in New Zealand; the 40-acre Expedia headquarters site on Seattle’s waterfront; Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco that includes a public park; and Uliveto, a private residence in Northern California.

Roderick Wyllie, FASLA, and James A. Lord, FASLA, along with partner Geoff di Girolamo, have established Surfacedesign as an international leader in landscape architecture, urban design, and sustainability. Alumni of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, both are ASLA Fellows. For the consistent excellence of their built designs, they were honored with the 2017 Cooper Hewitt Design Award.