Talk: The Rise & Fall of the Great American Lawn
Thursday, Mar. 19 · 7 pm - 9 pm Longmont Museum 400 Quail Rd., Longmont, CO 80501
A conversation with Emily Maeda, Tree of Life Landscapes and Michael Guidi, Denver Botanic Gardens.
Along with a white picket fence, a perfectly manicured expansive lawn has long been synonymous with the American Dream. However, in terms of biodiversity and the environment, they’re a disaster. Join us as we trace the history of the American lawn and offer up some alternatives along the way.
This program is part of our Thursday Nights @ the Museum series. Join us every Thursday from Jan. 22 until May 7 for concerts, films, and free talks in the Longmont Museum’s Stewart Auditorium.
Emily Maeda is Vice President of and a Designer at Tree of Life Landscapes, a company she and her husband Mark Maeda founded in 1998. Their design aesthetic draws upon the landscapes that they have seen around them as Colorado natives and an ethical imperative to design with native and well-adapted plants that thrive year-round in Colorado’s extremes while staying attuned to water conservation. Emily grew up outside of Boulder on her parents’ farm where she learned to love the beauty of Colorado’s natural environment. Her love of plants quickly grew with forays into herb and flower gardens she designed and installed and continued in her work at an organic farm.  She pursued her education in piano performance at the University of Colorado and Arizona State University, where she also took classes in landscape design before returning to Colorado where she taught and performed piano, while also pursuing design skills in landscape design.
Michael Guidi is an ecologist and horticulture researcher who is passionate about naturalistic plantings that embody the flexibility and resiliency of wild systems. His work draws inspiration from liminal urban spaces and wild areas alike. Preferring common and weedy plants to the rare and precious, Michael is a proponent of dynamic, self-sustaining gardens and green infrastructure as alternatives to static high-maintenance landscaping. His research links ecological theory with horticultural techniques and designs to broaden the definition of gardens and gardening. Michael worked as a field biologist before joining the Denver Botanic Gardens horticulture department. He holds a MS degree in Ecology from the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at Colorado State University and a BS degree in Biology from Ithaca College.
