Benjamin Vogt’s Monarch Gardens in Lincoln, Nebraska, has been featured in Fine Gardening, Garden Design, and other magazines as an example of prairie landscaping with native grasses and flowers. He has been interviewed for dozens of podcasts, articles, and books while speaking nationally on environmental activism and sustainable urban design for wildlife.

Vogt will be the next guest of Midwestern State University’s Speakers & Issues Series at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 21, at the Wichita Falls Museum of Art at MSU Texas. His topic will be “A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future,” which is also the name of his book.

Vogt wrote an award-winning garden column for the home design and improvement community Houzz (over 200 articles with 3 million reads), and has contributed to books such as Lawn Gone! And Pollinator Friendly Gardening. His freelance photography has appeared in publications such as the Xerces Society’s Gardening for Butterflies, Orion Magazine, and many others. His essays have been published in anthologies such as The Tallgrass Prairie Reader, Natural Treasures of the Great Plains, and Prairie Gold, while his Pushcart Prize-nominated poems have appeared in over 60 publications.

Admission is free; donations are welcome. Contact Associate Professor of History Whitney Snow for information.

The Speakers and Issues Series began in 2001 with the idea of bringing informed and creative speakers to the academic and municipal communities. Since then, speakers have come to MSU from all corners of the country. It is supported by the Libra Foundation, MSU’s Prothro-Yeager College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Wichita Falls Times Record News, KCCU-FM NPR Radio, and KFDX-TV3.