February 18, 2022

Seeding Change: Plant Nurseries and Social Justice

ARC Fellow: Seyyada Burney
Degree Program: Master of Landscape Architecture
Faculty Advisors: Catherine De Almeida, Landscape Architecture
Firm: GGN
Firm Advisors: Andy Polefrone, Lama Hasan, and Keith McPeters
Project dates: Autumn 2021 – Spring 2022

Read the Project Plan
Read the Final Report
Recorded Spring Presentation

More about this project:

This research explores how plant cultivation practices can promote social and spatial justice. It
traces how commercial nurseries became a dominant form of plant cultivation in the U.S. and
highlights plant growers and growing spaces that operate outside of this model. Historical and
case study analysis of resultant material lifecycles reveal strategies for application in design
practice. What can landscape architects learn by broadening our definitions of ‘plant nurseries’?
How might we engage with and incorporate plant cultivation within our projects to advance
spatial justice and equity? These strategies are distilled into a speculative, ‘kit of parts’ for
reclaiming plant cultivation as community organizing, resistance, and rehabilitation.