This talk embeds Aldo Leopold's famous restoration project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum within a broader history of an "ecological gardening" movement that emerged from collaborations among landscape architects and ecologists. Members of the former Wild Flower Preservation Society were influential in ecological gardening, and their methods of native plant cultivation, as well as their aesthetic of letting a garden "direct itself," would be adopted gradually by those advocating for restoration of native plants in degraded areas.

Laura Martin is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Williams College. Before arriving at Williams, Martin was a Ziff Environmental Fellow at Harvard University. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University, specializing in evolutionary ecology and environmental history. She has been awarded fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Doris Duke Foundation. Her book Saving Species: The History and Politics of Ecological Restoration is forthcoming in 2021.

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