Leaves to Landscapes: A Course on Art, Plant Science, and Ecological Relationship

This presentation reflects on our team-taught interdisciplinary course—Leaves to Landscapes: A Visual Journey Through Plant Ecology and Art—which combines artistic practice and the study of plant ecophysiology. Grounded in shared praxes of close observation and material engagement, we invite students to encounter plants and the local landscape not as passive scenery or purely visual subjects, but as living beings within intelligent, interdependent systems.

Rather than treating science and art as separate domains, our course emphasizes shared practices of attention, interpretation, and reciprocal learning. Students create visual field journals, conduct slow studies of plant processes, and develop personal projects through interdependent inquiry. They engage with plants as both material and teacher—learning from plant processes, experimenting with foraged inks and dyes, slowing down to draw and observe, and tracing the histories of botanical representation across time and culture.

The course asks: How can drawing and making with plants deepen ecological understanding? How can material practice be informed by an understanding how plants grow, adapt, and interact?

Rooted in collaboration, our course positions both art and plant science within the context of rapid ecological change, aiming to cultivate care, humility, and attentiveness to land as a living system. As one of the course’s two co-instructors, I will share examples of student work, field-based practices, and strategies for integrating artistic and scientific inquiry, as well as lessons learned and questions raised after the course’s inaugural offering in Fall 2025.