Lecture Series
The Morris Arboretum & Gardens Lecture Series brings together expert voices to explore ideas that connect people, plants, and the natural world. Through conversations, talks, and presentations, participants can engage with new perspectives and current research.
Offered throughout the year, lectures create space to learn, reflect, and connect with others in a welcoming setting.
Plant Politics: Images, Knowledge, and Power
A Virtual Lunchtime Conversation
Tuesday, October 13 • 12 – 1 pm
Members: $10 • Non-members: $15
REGISTER TODAY →
Every picture of a plant tells a story...
From botanical illustrations and herbarium specimens to illustrated manuscripts and contemporary photographs, images shape how plants are named, understood, and valued. They also reveal deeper stories about exploration, colonialism, science, and whose knowledge is preserved.
Join Tracy Qiu and Catherine Seavitt for an interactive lunchtime virtual conversation that uses four images to explore how botanical knowledge is created, shared, and challenged. Together, they will examine the colonial legacies of botanical gardens and plant science, consider how terms like native, exotic, weed, and invasive influence our thinking, and highlight the contributions of Indigenous communities and other often-overlooked knowledge holders.
Held the day after Indigenous Peoples' Day, this timely conversation invites participants to reconsider the stories we tell (and the ones we don't) and discover how the ways we picture plants continue to shape our relationships with the living world.
A Zoom link will be emailed to all registrants in advance of the program.
Speakers:
Tracy Qiu is a post-doctoral researcher at Concordia University in Montreal, specializing in the colonial history of botanical gardens and their roles in contemporary society. With over a decade of experience as a researcher, consultant, and artist, she applies decolonizing and inclusion-focused practices to help public gardens address issues of racial diversity, colonial legacies, and community belonging. Tracy is a former Longwood Graduate Fellow and has worked with Niagara Parks and the National Tropical Botanical Gardens. Her interdisciplinary approach combines qualitative research, visual art, and horticulture to explore how gardens can reconcile their colonial pasts while fostering inclusive futures.
Catherine Seavitt is professor and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, the Martin and Margy Meyerson Chair of Urbanism, co-executive director of The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism & Ecology, and creative director of LA+, the Weitzman School’s interdisciplinary journal of landscape architecture. She joined Penn in July of 2023, after more than a decade on the faculty at the City College of New York, where she served as professor and director of the Master of Landscape Architecture program. Catherine’s scholarship and design work examines the entanglement of public space and public health through the lens of ecology, policy, and novel plant science.
Wild Philly
Mike Weilbacher, Naturalist, Writer, Educator
Saturday, November 7
10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Members: $30 • Non-members: $35
REGISTER TODAY →
America’s sixth-largest city is home to an amazing abundance of wildlife. Meet some of the region’s featured creatures and the places where you can see the full diversity of wildlife. In addition, you'll learn the surprising ecological practices of the Lenape, the key role Philadelphia played in our nation's understanding of natural history, and the largest threats to nature locally—plus great ways you can help heal nature.
Presented by writer-naturalist Mike Weilbacher, this illustrated lecture is the perfect companion to Mike’s book by the same name, which he will be selling and signing after the lecture. A former nonprofit executive, Mike travels the region offering lectures and walks on diverse topics like climate change in Philly, the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, and the healing power of nature.
Endowed Lectures
An annual series of lectures held from late fall to early spring that explore a wide variety of fascinating topics. Lectures are supported in part by the Klein Lecture Endowment given in memory of Dr. William M. Klein, who served from 1977 to 1990 as the Morris’s first full-time director; the Laura L. Barnes Lecture Endowment of the Philadelphia Foundation, given in memory of Laura Barnes by students and alumni of her school of horticulture; and the Byron Lukens Lecture Endowment, given in memory of educator and Morris volunteer Byron Lukens and his wife Elizabeth.