“Landscapes of Retreat details what dealing with climate change actually looks like on the ground in five very different parts of the world. Elkin’s innovative research integrates the cultural, botanical, and geological aspects of the issue with a particular emphasis on 'how plants reflect and can modify these changes when people pay attention to what they are telling us about the environment.”

— Dr. Peter Del Tredici, Senior Research Scientist Emeritus, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University


“Landscapes of Retreat draws an elegant map through a tumultuous future, illustrating strategies and perspectives that have guided people in the past, as well as those currently in use by communities working to heal wounds and adapt to the unknown. Through the shifting landscape of relationship, those among trees and pathogens, designers and dwellers, Elkin reveals pathways of hope and community building that can guide our work supporting new, old, broken, and as yet unimagined relations.”

— Rebecca McMackin, Ecological Horticulturist


“In Landscapes of Retreat, Elkin shares varied lessons from the multi­generational lived experiences of Indigenous communities in changing landscapes across several continents. In doing so, she offers a hopeful perspective on retreat as a mode of climate adaptation—a cultural practice of living with, not against, the more than human world. The J.B. Jackson Prize jury was unanimous in our selection; we offer the highest praise for this book and its author, a scholar of rare honesty, transparency, and vulnerability whose account of her research methods is as fascinating as the subject of her book.”

— Elizabeth Meyer, Merrill D. Peterson Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia & Chair of the J.B. Jackson Prize Jury, UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes


“Elkin’s research reveals how landscapes register climate change at different scales and posits how design can spark both understanding and adaptation.”

— Kate Orff, Principal & Founder SCAPE, Professor & Director of the Urban Design Program, Columbia GSAPP


“The opposite of retreat, as it is defined by Rosetta S. Elkin, is to continue to bear down upon and reinforce relations which are broken and which cause harm in the name of ‘advance’ or ‘progress.’ Elkin’s fine and beautifully produced and illustrated book shows how processes and practices of easing up and backing off in design give landscapes resilience in the face of climate change and the wiggle room they need to flourish. Five rich case studies help the reader to see principles in action, leading by example. Landscapes of Retreat should be on the shelf of any designer grappling to come to terms with a radically different future, which is all of us.”

— Tim Waterman, Professor of Landscape Theory, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London