In the Gardens of California's Prison Landscapes

Registration for this event is free but you must register at this link

Dr. Elizabeth Lara will present on gardens at historic sites of incarceration: Mission Santa Barbara, Alcatraz Island, and Manzanar. Based on her doctoral dissertation which explored relationships among people, plants, and prisons throughout California across different periods, this talk will draw on ethnographic research into how gardens factor into complex heritage sites and how contemporaneous sites of incarceration might be interpreted in the future. Dr. Lara will also be talking about the work of the organization Land Together.

Dr. Elizabeth Lara currently works as a garden educator, a facilitator for a domestic violence intervention program, and a tour guide at the Dodger Stadium Botanic Garden. Deeply devoted to plants, gardens, landscape history, and public horticulture as they intersect with matters of liberation, she has served on the research committee for the Ecologies of Justice Network since 2021. Her work “Prison Gardens and Growing Abolition” has been published in the edited collection "The Promise of Multispecies Justice" (Duke Press 2022).

Thursday, September 25, 2025, 7 - 8 pm

Ahmanson Classroom at The Huntington

1151 Oxford Road, San Marino  91108

Reserve your spot for free here

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