The Garden Futures Summit is a two-day, in-person event that looks to sustain the remarkable passion and interest in gardening today by presenting a selection of the most exciting ideas shaping the future of gardens and society at large. The Summit, on September 29th and 30th, will focus on three essential topics within contemporary gardening: environment, community, and culture.

On the first day of the Summit, to be held at The New York Botanical Garden, more than a dozen influential speakers from across the gardening world will participate in sessions organized around the Summit topics. They will discuss the extraordinary potential of gardens and gardening to improve our physical, cultural, and emotional health and well-being.

On the second day of the Summit, attendees will be treated to exclusive experiences at both private and public gardens throughout New York City and the greater metropolitan area that embody the forward-thinking and transformative potential in gardens today. Tours will be announced later this summer.
 

The breadth of speakers at the Summit and the combination of talks and tours will be of interest to all gardeners, designers, architects, and students who are passionate about gardens and their enormous potential in society. The Keynote Address will be given by Lady Isabella Tree (pictured below) on The Book of Wilding – A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small. Isabella Tree is an award-winning journalist and author of five books. Her first best-selling book, Wilding, tells the story of the daring wildlife experiment she began in 2000: rewilding her and her husband Charlie Burrell’s 3,500 acres of unprofitable farmland at Knepp Estate in West Sussex, UK. In less than twenty years their degraded land has become a functioning ecosystem again, wildlife has rocketed, and numerous endangered species have made Knepp their home. What has happened at Knepp challenges conventional ideas about nature, wildlife, and how we manage and envisage our land. It reveals the potential for the landscapes of the future. Isabella also writes for The Guardian, National Geographic Magazine, and Granta.

Other speakers include Edwina von Gal, founder of The Perfect Earth Project. Edwina von Gal is a leading voice in sustainable gardening and landscape design. She founded the Perfect Earth Project in 2013 to promote nature-based, toxic-free land care for the health of people, their pets, and the planet. As principal of her eponymous landscape design firm since 1984, Edwina creates landscapes with a focus on simplicity and sustainability for private and public clients around the world. Joining her as session speakers will be Horatio Joyce of The Garden Conservancy, Vanessa Keith of StudioTEKA Design, Jeff Lorenz of Refugia Design, and Rebecca McMackin, horticulturist and garden designer.

You will also have the opportunity to hear Jennifer Jewell, Radio Host and Author of Cultivating Place. This year, Jewell was awarded the American Horticultural Society’s Great Gardener Morrison Award for outstanding horticultural communication. Her third book, What We Sow, On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds will be published in September. On the topic of Community, session speakers will include Ivi Diamantopoulou, Jaffer Kolb, and Sam Stewart-Halevy of New Affiliates, Adam Greenspan of PWP Landscape Architects, Peter Lefkovits of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and Nicole Thomas of Urban Health Lab.

In another thread, horticulture and culture are on a collision course—and that’s a good thing. Forgotten garden histories, the challenges of preserving mid-century landscapes, and the growing engagement of the visual arts with the natural environment are the animating topics in a session to be led by Melissa Chiu. She is director of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the national museum of modern and contemporary art. Dr. Chiu’s current organizational focus is transforming the Hirshhorn into a 21st-century institution through the revitalization of the museum’s campus, including a new design for the Hirshhorn’s Sculpture Garden by artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto. Joining Melissa will be Cindy Brockway of The Trustees of Reservations, David Godshall of Terremoto of LA, Abra Lee, horticulturist and historian, and Brent Leggs of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.

Registration – $30 Students, $170 Garden Conservancy members, $200 general public, is available at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/education/education-events/garden-futures-summit-2023