Date of Award
Summer 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)
Department
Landscape Architecture
First Advisor
Ann Kearsley
Abstract
We surround ourselves with empty landscapes, landscapes that are stagnant and decorative. Lawns edged with cultivated non-native species are inert spaces, devoid of complexity and serve little function beyond their appearances. These spaces that symbolize wealth through controlling nature are in fact the end of nature. Most of us are completely unaware of the intricate webs of life, the ecologies, that are our real habitat, hidden under the concrete and turf, pushed to the edges of our developments. They are relationships established over thousands of years between plants, insects, animals, weather and soil. This kind of complexity scares us, it is beyond our understanding on many levels but this does not diminish its importance.
Site Specific Nurseries is asking you to look beyond our hierarchical relationship with plants, informed by our limited capitalist lens and colonial legacies and reconnect our horticultural system back to place and time. We must begin to recognize plants for not only their complexity, but the role they play in safeguarding our future on this planet.
We must shift our horticultural system away from aesthetics and play toward function and care. My proposal is to grow ecotypic trees as bare-roots on land trust farms. But this opportunity can be expanded beyond woodies and into a variety of growing spaces. This manualette will hopefully guide other students, farmers or horticulturalists who want their field work to be truly impactful and sustainable.
Recommended Citation
Collins, Tryn, "Site-Specific Nurseries: Reconnecting Nurseries to Time and Place Through Ecotypic Bare-Root Production" (2025). Masters Theses. 1375.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1375
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