Rosetta S. Elkin

I work with landscape as a practice and a medium. One of the most direct ways to engage with landscape as a designer is to pay attention to plants; through behavior, across time and in our everyday lives. When I want to learn more about a plant, I pursue growth, not form. Most often, this draws me into the ground since plant life develops underfoot. In writing and scholarship, I aim to experiment with the ways in which we compose our worlds, blurring the traditional boundaries in the research process.

Professionally, I am the founding Principal of Practice Landscape, a collaborative studio that prioritizes landscape-making, gardens, public exhibitions, and horticultural design to promote a more thoughtful and accountable design agenda, while Practice Grant supports community attempts to expand land based practices. She is also a research Associate at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum. My work has received numerous awards including the Graham Foundation Grant, Harvard Climate Solutions Award the Garden Club of America Rome Prize in landscape architecture and has been exhibited widely in venues such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, Les Jardins de Metis, Chelsea Festival, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Authored books range from a survey of tree planting programs across drylands in Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) and Tiny Taxonomy (Actar 2017) a publication which reflects on the scale of individual plants through a reading of three garden installations. My most recent book project is a fieldwork-based portrait of climate adaptation around the world, entitled Landscapes of Retreat (K. Verlag, 2023). I have published widely in magazine, journals and other media; but believe in open access publishing, so all titles are available for free download here.

PhD, University of Antwerp
MLA, University of Toronto
BFA, Concordia University