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The 27th Annual Landscape Design Portfolios Lecture Series welcomes three outstanding professionals—NYBG's very-own Todd Forrest, award-winning landscape architects Walter Hood, and Mikyoung Kim—to present innovative landscapes that enhance quality of life and satisfy our innate desires for nature and community.

Todd Forrest: Creating an Urban Oasis
September 16, 6:30-7:30pm ET, Online
The New York Botanical Garden has been a connective hub among people, plants, and the planet since 1891. Since inception, millions of visitors have made the Garden a part of their lives, exploring the joy, beauty, and respite of nature here in the heart of the Bronx. One of the Garden's remarkable leaders, Todd Forrest, Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections, has dedicated himself to the development and reimagination of many well-loved areas within these 250-acres for over 20 years, including the Benenson Ornamental Conifers, the Native Plant Garden, the Azalea Garden, and the Thain Family Forest, as well as the annual Orchid Show and many interdisciplinary exhibitions.

Hear from Forrest as he reveals the role landscape architecture plays in enticing visitors to return every season. He will share how his collaborations with distinguished landscape architects and designers—such as Laurie Olin, Signe Nielsen, Lynden Miller, Madison Cox, Susan Cohen, Piet Oudolf, Sarah Price, Shavaun Towers, just to name a few—have brought varied artistic visions to NYBG.

Walter Hood: Cultural Storytelling Through Design
October 7, 6:30-7:30pm, Online
MacArthur 'Genius' Grant-winner Walter Hood creates green spaces that resonate with and enrich the lives of residents while also honoring communal histories. As founder and creative director of Oakland-based firm, Hood Design Studio, he has transformed a variety of areas—from the redesign of traffic islands, vacant lots, and freeway underpasses that challenge the legacy of neglect of urban neighborhoods to large-scale commemorative landscapes that reflect his firm's interest in the role of sculpture in public space.

Hood will share projects that approach design through the lens of cultural storytelling and community engagement, including the highly-praised International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina—an impactful landscape that addresses memory, tragedy, and culture while paying homage to the local community and the African diaspora at large. Hood will also share insights into his firm's upcoming redesign of the landscape surrounding Lincoln Center and Damrosch Park in NYC. This project aims to address the urban barrier created by the center's construction in the 1960s—a project that displaced much of the San Juan Hill neighborhood on Manhattan's West Side.

Mikyoung Kim: Designing for Higher Ground
October 28, 6:30-7:30pm, Online
Mikyoung Kim, FASLA, is the founding principal of MYK, a globally recognized landscape and urban design studio that integrates the latest research in neurodivergent science into the design of our shared experiences. Her work bridges public health policy with environmental stewardship, creating places that foster resilience, connection, and well-being. From large scale urban parks to healing gardens and educational campuses, her projects reflect a deeply human centered and innovative design ethos.

Join Kim as she shares how landscapes are an important catalyst for public health and urban resilience. Her talk will feature celebrated large-scale projects such as the Regenstein Learning Campus at the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Cheonggye River Restoration Project in Seoul, and the TMC Helix Park in Houston.

We offer Continuing Education credits (CEUS) for LA CES and APLD for successful completion of this lecture.

Support generously provided by the Heimbold Family.

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Schedule:	3 Tuesdays, 9/16, 10/7 and 10/28, 6:30-7:30pm
Times:	06:30pm-07:30pm EDT
	View Full Schedule  |   View Full Schedule
Meeting Date Start Time End Time Tuesday, September 16, 2025 06:30pm 07:30pm Tuesday, October 7, 2025 06:30pm 07:30pm Tuesday, October 28, 2025 06:30pm 07:30pm Meeting Date Start Time End Time Tuesday, September 16, 2025 06:30pm 07:30pm Tuesday, October 7, 2025 06:30pm 07:30pm Tuesday, October 28, 2025 06:30pm 07:30pm
Instructor:	Todd Forrest Todd Forrest Todd Forrest Todd Forrest is Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections at the New York Botanical Garden. He oversees the team of managers, curators, and horticulturists who steward the Garden's natural landscapes, plant collections, gardens, and glasshouses and develop its celebrated horticulture exhibitions. An advocate for historic trees and forests in urban landscapes and public gardens, Forrest is the primary author of Gardening with Nature at The New York Botanical Garden and The Magnificent Trees of The New York Botanical Garden and contributed essays to The Conservatory: Gardens Under Glass, The Trees of North America: Michaux and Redoute's American Masterpiece, and Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time. He earned a BA in Philosophy at Wesleyan and worked as a curatorial assistant at Boston's Arnold Arboretum before receiving his Master of Forest Science from Yale University's School of the Environment. With knowledge of international gardens, he also completed a course on the art of Japanese gardens, in Kyoto. Walter Hood Walter Hood Walter Hood Walter Hood is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, CA. Hood is a former professor and chair at the University of California, Berkeley, and lectures on professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally. He is a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, 2021 Architectural League's President's Medal award, 2024 Vincent Scully Prize, and most recently the 2025 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture. Mikyoung Kim Mikyoung Kim Mikyoung Kim Mikyoung Kim is an international landscape architect and urban designer. As founding principal, her Boston based studio integrates the latest neurodivergent science in the design of our shared landscapes, connecting human health with environmental stewardship. Over the past two decades, her studio's large-scaled work includes the Seoul Cheonggye River Restoration project, the 42- acre Science Hill Wellesley Campus, and Ford's Michigan Central Park in Detroit. Recent restorative projects include the Crown Sky Garden in Chicago, the TMC Helix Park in Houston, the Bal Harbour Jetty Park in Miami, and the Regenstein Nature Learning Center at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Mikyoung Kim has received the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Museum Design Award, the ASLA Firm of the Year Award, and the ASLA National Design Medal. This year, her studio has been named by Fast Company as one of the most innovative companies in North America. As a thought leader on restorative design, her ideas and work has been highlighted in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Geographic, Landscape Architecture Magazine, Architectural Record, Dwell, Surface, Garden Design, and the Chicago Tribune.
Location:	Online-Live,
Session Number:	262LEC801AO

Landscape Design Portfolio Series: All Three Sessions ticket
3 Tuesdays, 9/16, 10/7 and 10/28, 6:30-7:30pm
06:30pm-07:30pm EDT
	Non-Member : $99.00 Member : $89.00	Ticket Quantity

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