The Atlanta Canopy Conference will inspire you to “Bring the Arboretum Home”. Hosted by Trees Atlanta, this conference will educate, inform, and motivate you to protect our urban canopy. Come learn how the Atlanta BeltLine Arboretum is being used to demonstrate what can happen in large scale throughout the city.
Conference Overview
The Atlanta BeltLine began as a grassroots movement over 10 years ago to transform abandoned railways into a transportation loop around the heart of our city. The visionary idea that the transit corridor could also become a 22-mile linear arboretum – freely accessible to the public – was introduced by Trees Atlanta.
While only a portion of planned trails are complete and transit has not yet started construction, there are over one million visitors enjoying the Atlanta BeltLine each year. Residents and visitors alike are finding better connectivity through our city on foot or by bike. They are also rediscovering lost connections to nature in the Arboretum and benefiting from the ecosystem services of the trees and native plantings. Through strong partnerships, the Atlanta BeltLine Arboretum has become a vibrant and vital part of this world-renowned urban redevelopment program. Atlanta is positioned to become a leader of innovations in urban ecology and urban forest protection if we leverage our best ideas.
This conference will motivate professionals, community leaders, and residents to take the lessons learned from the Atlanta BeltLine Arboretum and other arboreta to implement into their own projects – whether full scale developments or your own back yard.
Who should attend?
Arborists, Landscape Architects, City Planners, Community Leaders, Residents, Students, Master Gardeners and Garden Club members, Environmental Leaders and Educators, and anyone who appreciates the wonder and ecological value of the Atlanta BeltLine Arboretum and Atlanta’s urban forest.
Keynote Speaker
Darrel Morrison, FASLA, is a pioneer in the use of native plants and natural processes in the design of urban landscapes, with the goal of creating landscapes which are both ecologically sound and experientially rich. After obtaining his Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin, he taught there (1969-1983); the University of Georgia (1983-2005); and Columbia University (2007-2014).
He was the senior landscape designer of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas in the early 1990s, and subsequently has done design work at a number of arboreta and botanic gardens, including the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, Chicago Botanic Garden,
New York Botanical Garden and Brooklyn Botanic Garden, all of which feature gardens based on
native plant communities in their respective regions. Most recently, he designed the Stella Niagara Preserve on the Niagara River, just downstream from Niagara Falls, for the Western New York Land Conservancy.
He has recently moved from New York City, back to Madison, Wisconsin where, among other landscape-related activities, he serves on the Board of The Friends of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum.
Watch this video published by the Library of American Landscape History – Designing in the Prairie Spirit: A Conversation with Darrel Morrison.
