This video was made eighteen months into my ongoing engagement with the perennial prairie plant Silphium integrifolium. Created in response to the prompt to tell “My Silphium Story” as part of a multifaceted civic science experiment run by The Land Institute, it pulls from my extensive fieldwork photography archive, weaving images intended as documentation and data collection resources into a narrative that also incorporates the broader ecosocial context of the habitat the Silphium plants are rooted in. I chose to plant the 36 Silphium seedlings shipped to me by The Land Institute in May 2020 in the midst of an evolving land art piece focused on disrupting lawn monocultures: The Lawn (Re)Disturbance Laboratory. As detailed in the video, there many layers to this land, and rooting Silphium here has provided an enriching catalyst and focal point for dreaming and acting towards more productive and abundant futures in settings where default lawn-management seems like the eternal choice, stifling other possibilities.

Made in December 2021 response to work with The Land Institute, The Sanctuary for Independent Media, and the Lawn (Re)Disturbance Laboratory.