Rosetta S. Elkin

Elkin’s work aims to elevate the role of plants in human life by exploring the concealed characteristics of non-human behavior. As a designer and a scholar, her work experiments with the ways in which we compose our worlds, blurring the traditional boundaries between research and practice. Elkin is the founding Principal of Practice Landscape, a collaborative studio that prioritizes garden-making, public exhibitions, ecological and horticultural research 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. Her 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.
Elkin’s written research and essays are featured in a range of publication including Topos, Journal of Landscape Architecture, New Geographies, Harvard Design Magazine and Arnoldia. Elkin is the author of Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) which describes the geo-political ambitions of tree planting programs. An earlier book publication reflects on the scale of individual plants through a reading of three garden installations, Tiny Taxonomy (Actar 2017). Her forthcoming book is a fieldwork-based portrait of climate adaptation around the world, entitled Landscapes of Retreat (K. Verlag, 2023).

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