?In a delicately illustrated book, two Harvard University students make the case for the humble weed.
Americans spend more time weeding their gardens than the 100 largest cities spend on their parks. Students Yuqi Zhang, Student International ASLA, and Xinran Ma, Associate ASLA, investigated this commitment to the eradication of unwanted plants in their pop-up and fold-out book Wonderland of Weeds, aimed at teens. The book won an Honor Award in the Student Communications category.
The cover of Wonderland of Weeds.
With beautiful, delicate, hand-drawn colored pencil illustrations, the duo turns the notion of what a weed is on its head, changing the reader?s perspective along the way. The book focuses on the aesthetic and ecological value of weeds, as well as their edible and medical uses. It?s thoroughly participatory, with lessons on how to make dye, refine medicine, and cook a meal. Weed ecology gets its due, foregrounding the abilities of weeds as pioneer species to bring verdancy back to bare ground. Throughout, the book is filled with experiments in cultivation and observation that let weeds tell their own story in the landscape. A detail from Wonderland of Weeds.
A detail of Wonderland of Weeds showing the book’s pop-up element.
A page from Wonderland of Weeds.
Yuqi Zhang, Student International ASLA; Xinran Ma, Associate ASLA

Faculty Adviser: Francesca Benedetto
See more of the project here.The post Wonderland of Weeds first appeared on Landscape Architecture Ma...