Professor and Co-Chairperson,  Department of Biological Sciences
Thompson Rivers University

“…a traveler should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment”.
Charles Darwin, Voyage of the HMS Beagle

Working from the belief that we will not conserve what we do not know, I am an interdisciplinary plant conservation biologist who uses science and art (creative writing/illustration) to combat society’s plant blindness and extinction of experience with the natural world.  My first book, Drawing Botany Home: A Rooted Life helps explain why plants are our most important allies if we hope to cultivate a liveable future.

My research includes the scholarship of discovery in plant ecology, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and the scholarship of integration. As a plant ecologist, my research has investigated applied questions around plants and their conservation—especially for those plants living on spatial or temporal margins. In the scholarship of application, I have been using citizen science to help monitor the abundance of pollinator guilds within the South Thompson region (see Citizen Science/Bee Research). Within the scholarship of teaching and learning, my research focuses on how using tools from outside science—including place-based learning and the arts—can help students learn biology.  In 2018, I was honoured to receive the  Desire2Learn Innovation Award in Teaching and Learning for my use of drawing and creative writing to help botany students engage in deep and meaningful learning.

Finally, in the scholarship of integration, I use the art and science of natural history to re-story and reconcile home.  I believe that restoring the world must include our own re-storying within it. For me, the practice of illustrated field journal helps re-imagine my relationship with home and community, place and dwelling. I share the stories that I find, expressed in both image and text, in art galleries and science museum, and within the pages of journals such as The Goose, Terrain.org, Camas, and The Journal of Natural History Education and Experience (see Publications) as well as in my first book, Drawing Botany Home.