Last year, in the early days of the pandemic, I accidentally grew many more tomato seedlings than I could plant … More
Author: Erin Despard
The art of propagation
The big news this year is that I am the Artist in Residence at UBC Botanical Garden. The (somewhat loose) … More
Gardens are social media
A few years ago, the first full summer we lived in Sherbrooke, my husband and I built a wooden planter … More
Archaeologies of urban landscape
Hinge Park, as if the past was present (Nicole Crawford, 2019) This past summer I taught a special topics course … More
Landscapes of inattention
Two papers of mine recently appeared in academic journals. Both have been a long time coming to print, so maybe … More
Climate change and the many solitudes of Canada
Last summer, my family and I moved from Sherbrooke to Vancouver. Sherbrooke is a city of 150,000 people, located in the … More
What is landscape criticism and what can it do?
Last year I published an essay on the alternative news website, Rabble. After much thought and with more than a little … More
Collective gardening as research
Last summer, my husband and I built a small garden-on-wheels: it was a large rectangular planter mounted on the wheel … More
The work of gardening
For the first time in my life, I have my own garden. That is, my first garden larger than a … More
What does it mean to think critically about plants and landscape and why should we keep doing it?
I have been doing a kind of plant-focused landscape criticism for a number of years now. Plants are essential to human … More
