RDG Out & About: ASLA National Conference on Landscape Architecture
Catch RDG’s Grant Thompson, ASLA, PLA, LEED AP, at the ASLA Conference in New Orleans as he joins a panel on advancing urban biodiversity through local networks and native plant resilience.
Event Details
Date: Monday, October 13, 2025
Time: 8:30 - 9:45 AM CST
Location: New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room R04-R05
Session Details
RDG Landscape Architect Grant Thompson, ASLA, PLA, LEED AP, joins Deb Hilbert, Assistant Professor of Arboriculture & Urban Forestry at SUNY-ESF, and Suzette Lopane, ASLA, PLA, Principal Planner from Westchester County, for this session titled From Seed to Design: Enhancing Urban Biodiversity Through Local Networks.
As urban populations grow, enhancing biodiversity in landscapes is essential. This panel tackles systemic issues in the plant production supply chain, addressing barriers to native plant diversity and providing practical solutions through hyperlocal networks and new collaborative models.
Learning Outcomes:
Understand how biodiversity influences urban ecosystem stability and resilience, including the ecological and social benefits of diverse plant communities in a changing world.
Explore a model framework for understanding the plant supply chain and how human decision-makers at various levels affect the diversity and availability of plant species for urban landscapes.
Learn potential leverage points and strategies for altering the availability of diverse and native plant species in the nursery trade, and how to support these changes in their own regions.
Discover how a network of seed collectors, producers, and designers are collaborating to meet the demand for hyperlocal species, enhancing biodiversity in the built environment.