Looking for meaningful ways to engage with native plants beyond your own yard? Our upcoming webinar features Robin Wall Kimmerer, author, botanist, and founder of Plant Baby Plant, and Esther Bonney, youth organizer and founder of Nurture Natives. Drawing on their work in education, storytelling, and youth leadership, they will explore how people of all ages can take part in the native plant movement through shared learning, relationships, and local action.
Event Details
“Intergenerational Care for Land and Community: A Conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer and Esther Bonney“
Date: Wednesday, January 21, 2026
Time: 7 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. CT, 5 p.m. MT, 4 p.m. PT
Location: YouTube Live (link provided with registration).
This webinar will be recorded and shared with registrants after the webinar premiere.
This conversation is presented in partnership with Plant Baby Plant and Nurture Natives. All donations made at the time of registration will be shared between Plant Baby Plant, Nurture Natives, and Wild Ones to support community-rooted projects that build intergenerational relationships and put native plants into the ground.
About the Webinar
In this special collaboration, Robin Wall Kimmerer, author, botanist, and founder of Plant Baby Plant, joins youth leader and Nurture Natives founder Esther Bonney for an intergenerational conversation about belonging, reciprocity, and native plant action.
Together, they will explore questions such as:
- How do we create opportunities for young people to have a voice and feel empowered, even when they are not homeowners or decision makers?
- What kinds of relationships and mentorships help people stay engaged in native plant work over decades?
- Why do stories, shared practices, and community invitations matter just as much as plant lists?
Robin and Esther will reflect on what invites people into this work, what keeps them here, and what elders and youth have to teach each other.
This conversation is presented in partnership with:
Registration Form
About the Presenters
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Bud Finds Her Gift, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, which has earned Kimmerer wide acclaim. Her first book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing, and her other work has appeared in Orion, Whole Terrain, and numerous scientific journals. In 2022, Braiding Sweetgrass was adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith. This new edition reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest teachers: the plants around us.
Robin tours widely and has been featured on NPR’s On Being with Krista Tippett and, in 2015, addressed the United Nations General Assembly on “Healing Our Relationship with Nature.” Kimmerer is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, whose mission is to create programs that draw on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge for our shared goals of sustainability. In 2022, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.
As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin, and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge, and restoration ecology. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.
Esther Bonney is committed to advancing the critical intersection of youth mental health and environmental stewardship. At 19, she is the founding director of Nurture Natives, recognized by the Biden-Harris Administration as one of the country’s most impactful youth-led nonprofits, with a mission to empower young people through native biodiversity restoration. Under her leadership, Nurture Natives has educated over 10,000 young people, planted 2.4 million native seeds, and distributed over 70,000 native seedlings across the East Coast.
A freshman at the University of Maryland, College Park, Esther is majoring in Environmental Science & Policy on a pre-law track and is a Do Good Accelerator Fellow, building toward a career that bridges grassroots initiatives with the policy expertise and legal tools to achieve systemic change. In 2024, she shared her story at TEDxHagerstownWomen in her talk, “Have We Become Strangers to Our Own Nature?” She also serves on the board of the Maryland Native Plant Coalition, National 4-H Council, and Aspen Institute’s Center for Rising Generations.
Esther’s work has earned national recognition, including the President’s Environmental Youth Award from the Environmental Protection Agency, the National 4-H Youth in Action Award, and the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes. She has shared Nurture Natives’ mission with leaders such as President Biden, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, and Brenda Mallory, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Through her efforts, Esther is empowering an entire generation of young people to recognize the vital connection between mental well-being and the health of our environment.
