Reading Our Landscape
Bonnie Harper-Lore’s love of plants began at age twelve with a set of Golden Nature Guidebooks. From a blufftop of wildflowers on her parentsʼ farm she could see forever. Twenty-five years later she studied restoration ecology at the University of Wisconsin, only to learn her thinking place was a remnant xeric prairie. Graduate school led her to many plant-related jobs including residential design work and teaching ecological design at the University of Minnesota. At the Minnesota Department of Transportation she began one of the first wildflower programs in the country. This led to meeting Ladybird Johnson, an Act of Congress, and Bonnieʼs management of the federal/state roadside wildflower program.
During her federal work, Bonnie helped found three plant organizations: The Plant Conservation Alliance (15 agencies to protect native plants), the Federal Interagency Committee for the Management of Noxious and Exotic Weeds (16 agencies in unprecedented cooperation) and, Weeds Across Borders (3 countries united to stop the spread of invasives).
Dawn Pape
Dawn Pape started planting gardens when, in third grade, she was awarded a packet of seeds by her teacher. She hasn't stopped planting since. Dawn claims she may have been the only college student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to plant flowers at the places she rented. There she earned undergraduate degrees in Education, German Literature and Environmental Studies. She later earned her Masters degree in Environmental Education at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
For the past seventeen years Dawn has worked as a high school teacher, at a non-profit helping schools develop nature areas on their school grounds, and as an environmental education coordinator at a Rice Creek Watershed District where she started the Blue Thumb - Planting for Clean Water program®. Dawn is the author of A Lawn Chair Gardener's Guide to a Balanced Life and a More Balanced World and a local newspaper columnist. She is currently staying at home with her two young sons and running her own business called "Lawn Chair Gardener" where she enjoys speaking and writing about functional gardening, including growing natives and edibles, and planting to improve water quality.
Diane Hilscher’s love of nature developed as a child playing outdoors in woodlands of Wisconsin. Today her love of nature is reflected in her enthusiasm for hiking and canoeing, and in her work. Diane has honed her skills in ecological landscape design and construction project management over thirty years. She holds degrees in Landscape Architecture and in Natural Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After working for the National Park Service and National Forest Service while in college, and for seven years at landscape architecture firms, Diane founded her own firm, Hilscher Design and Ecology in 1991. Here she focuses on integrating natural systems and native plants into uniquely beautiful and functional landscape designs. These have included projects for St. Croix Public Library, Carpenter Nature Center, Karges Faulconbridge Engineering headquarters, and residential projects in our region.
Diane has served as Chapter President of Wild Ones-St. Croix Oak Savanna for the past seven years. She lives with her family near Stillwater, Minnesota where she enjoys gardening and restoration on three acres of oak savanna.
Landscapes tell us stories. Reading a landscape connects us to that place. We understand the richness of nature and history embedded there. Stone, soil and seasons, water and weather begin the story. Layers of life—from soil organisms and fungi, to plant, animal, and human populations—provide the actors. These elements weave into food webs, communities, and an ecosystem.
“Interpreting this reading matter, in place, on the land, seeing living things in their total environment, is an adventure…(in) ecology.” (Reading the Landscape of America, May Theilgaard Watts, 1957) In learning to read these stories we become better designers and stewards of our landscapes.
Darrel Morrison
Darrel Morrison, FASLA, has been an advocate of learning from native plant communities as models for designed landscapes since his days as a grad student and then, for fourteen years, as a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Landscape Architecture. His emphasis was on native plants, native plant communities, and landscape restoration. Subsequently, he taught in the School of Environmental Design at the University of Georgia where he served as Dean from 1983 to 1992.
Currently, Darrel lives in New York City where he continues to work on projects where native plant communities and natural processes provide inspiration and useful information. These include native tallgrass plantings at Storm King Art Center, a sculpture park in the Hudson River Valley; a small woodland garden at New York University (yes, native woodland plants will grow in the city!); an early-successional woodland planting at the Old Stone Mill on the Bronx River in the New York Botanical Garden; and eastern grassland and pine barrens plantings in the Native Flora Garden in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Bonnie Harper-Lore“Interpreting this reading matter, in place, on the land, seeing living things in their total environment, is an adventure…(in) ecology.” (Reading the Landscape of America, May Theilgaard Watts, 1957) In learning to read these stories we become better designers and stewards of our landscapes.
Darrel Morrison
Currently, Darrel lives in New York City where he continues to work on projects where native plant communities and natural processes provide inspiration and useful information. These include native tallgrass plantings at Storm King Art Center, a sculpture park in the Hudson River Valley; a small woodland garden at New York University (yes, native woodland plants will grow in the city!); an early-successional woodland planting at the Old Stone Mill on the Bronx River in the New York Botanical Garden; and eastern grassland and pine barrens plantings in the Native Flora Garden in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
During her federal work, Bonnie helped found three plant organizations: The Plant Conservation Alliance (15 agencies to protect native plants), the Federal Interagency Committee for the Management of Noxious and Exotic Weeds (16 agencies in unprecedented cooperation) and, Weeds Across Borders (3 countries united to stop the spread of invasives).
Dawn Pape
For the past seventeen years Dawn has worked as a high school teacher, at a non-profit helping schools develop nature areas on their school grounds, and as an environmental education coordinator at a Rice Creek Watershed District where she started the Blue Thumb - Planting for Clean Water program®. Dawn is the author of A Lawn Chair Gardener's Guide to a Balanced Life and a More Balanced World and a local newspaper columnist. She is currently staying at home with her two young sons and running her own business called "Lawn Chair Gardener" where she enjoys speaking and writing about functional gardening, including growing natives and edibles, and planting to improve water quality.
Diane Hilscher
Diane has served as Chapter President of Wild Ones-St. Croix Oak Savanna for the past seven years. She lives with her family near Stillwater, Minnesota where she enjoys gardening and restoration on three acres of oak savanna.
