Immigrants and the American Landscape
Landscape designer Wambui Ippolito shares stories from the history of land management
On Thursday, November 2nd, the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum will host Wambui Ippolito, an award-winning landscape designer and author, for a lecture on the contributions immigrants have made to the American landscape.
In a relatively short period of time, American landscapes have been altered, reshaped, and diversified by intense immigrant activities. Much like waves of earlier settlement, today’s immigrants continue to change the land through their gardening activities. These individuals introduce plants and practices that are beneficial and problematic to the land, forever transforming the American terrain.
In her lecture “Immigrants and the Evolution of the American Landscape,” Ippolito will take us through various immigrant garden landscapes and histories—from the early Scottish and Irish gardeners at great estates to today’s largely Central American workforces—with hopes of inspiring a new understanding and approach to immigrant land management.
The lecture will take place at 7:00pm in the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum’s Charles and Helen Reichert Planetarium theater. Tickets are available online at the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum’s website. Support for the lecture series is generously provided by a grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation.
Wambui Ippolito is a horticulturalist, landscape designer, and author based in New York City. She is a graduate of the prestigious New York Botanical Garden’s School of Professional Horticulture, and she has designed gardens for commercial, residential, and public spaces. Her design for the 2021 Philadelphia Flower Show won the competition by unanimous decision.
Wambui Ippolito is the author of an upcoming book on the contributions of immigrants to the American landscape. In 2022, she was invited to design a new Exhibition Courtyard for the expansion of the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia. Her commission marks the first time that an African-born female designer has been asked to create a permanent installation for a North American botanical garden.
Address: 180 Little Neck Rd., Centerport, NY 11721
Date & Time: Thursday, November 2 (11/02/2023) at 7:00pm
Website & Tickets: www.vanderbiltmuseum.org/featured-events/
Press Inquiries: Patrick Keeffe, Director of Communications, patrick@vanderbiltmuseum.org