Seeding Change: The Politics of Plants

Rosetta S. Elkin is a landscape architect, writer, and professor whose work considers living environments with a particular focus on the relationship between plants and human life. Rosetta is the Academic Director of the newly established Landscape Architecture Program at Pratt Institute and a Research Associate at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. She is the Principal of Practice Landscape, a collaborative studio that prioritizes garden-making, public exhibitions, and ecological research to promote a more thoughtful and accountable design agenda. She is also Co-founder of Practice Grant, a not-for-profit that seeks to open access to landscape design by funding those committed to alternative practices. Her work has received numerous awards including the Graham Foundation Grant, Harvard Climate Solutions Award, and the Rome Prize in landscape architecture, while her work has been exhibited widely in venues such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, Les Jardins de Metis, and the Chelsea Festival. Elkin is the author of Tiny Taxonomy: Individual Plants in Landscape Architecture (Actar, 2018); Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), and most recently Landscapes of Retreat (K Kerlag, 2023).

Photo: courtesy of the artist.

Erika Rumbley is Stanley P. Kozak Director of Horticulture at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. She works with a team of seven horticulturists to care for the Gardner’s living collection and create perpetually blooming displays in the museum’s central courtyard. Erika is also a Co-Founder and Director of The New Garden Society, an organization dedicated to training students in the art and science of plants in Boston prisons and jails. Erika is a graduate of Vassar College, with an Honors BA in Environmental Studies. Since her first apprenticeship in 2005, Erika has grown ornamentals, cut flowers, fruit, and vegetables in fields and greenhouses in New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. In a parallel vein, Erika has served on a range of land-based non-profits as a facilitator and adult educator, including Southside Community Land Trust, Boston Natural Areas Network and The Trustees of Reservations.

Erika Rumbley Photo Credit by Derrick Zellman

Charles Waldheim is an American Canadian architect and urbanist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Waldheim’s research examines the relationships between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism. Waldheim is the author, editor, or co-editor of numerous publications on these topics, including Landscape as Urbanism: A General Theory and The Landscape Urbanism Reader. Waldheim developed the theory of landscape urbanism in response to the industrial economies and emergent ecologies of the American city. On this topic, he curates Harvard GSD’s Future of the American City platform.

Waldheim is John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design where he directs the school’s Office for Urbanization. He also serves as Ruettgers Curator of Landscape at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston where he convenes The Larger (Landscape) Conversation and most recently co-curated Presence of Plants in Contemporary Art. Waldheim is the recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, the Visiting Scholar Research Fellowship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Sanders Fellowship at the University of Michigan, and the Cullinan Chair at Rice University. He has been visiting scholar at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, Germany.

Photo: courtesy of the artist.

UIi Lorimer is the Director of Horticulture for Native Plant Trust. He oversees the facilities and operations at Garden in the Woods and at Nasami Farm. Uli brings 20 years of experience working with native plants in public gardens with previous positions at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Wave Hill Garden and the US National Arboretum. He is a tireless advocate for the use of native plants in designed spaces through his public speaking, writing, lectures and media appearances. Uli feels most grounded with his hands in the soil.

Photo: courtesy of the artist.