Speaker Bio

Benjamin Vogt is the author of A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future. For five years he wrote a native plant and sustainable landscape column for Houzz which received over three million readers, while his work has appeared in countless magazines, books, and other publications. He owns Monarch Gardens, a prairie-inspired design firm, and has a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Benjamin resides in the tallgrass echo of eastern Nebraska with his wife and son.

Getting Back Into Balance Through Our Landscapes: A New Land Ethic

In a time of mass extinction and climate change, how and for whom we garden matters more than ever. Our built landscapes reflect social ethics and values that guide our response to reviving wildness in and outside the urban environment. How can we recognize and develop compassion for other species? What roll do native plants have in opening us to the perspectives of others? What happens to our society when we advocate for the equality and freedom of a silent majority? Through ecology, psychology, landscape design, horticulture, philosophy, and social science, we ll explore the rich complexity of rethinking pretty and what a garden means in the anthropocene.