Nina Weithorn - Allensworth Agricultural Experiment Station (2024 LAF National Olmsted Scholar)

Nina Weithorn, a Master of Landscape Architecture student at the University of Southern California, is the 2024 graduate National Olmsted Scholar. Nina has a background in agriculture and environmental science and has worked as a garden educator and collaborated on the establishment of food justice initiatives in her hometown of Los Angeles. For two years, Nina has been working with the town of Allensworth in Tulare County, California, to develop an agroecological farm to revitalize soils, create space for community food production, and provide resources on agroecology. She plans to use her award to continue her work on the Allensworth Agricultural Experiment Station (AAES), testing soil-building techniques inspired by African Dark Earth and cultivating climate-adapted and culturally significant crops in collaboration with Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities in Allensworth. She plans to share lessons from this project in the form of an Agroecological Landscape Design Toolkit inspired by Tuskegee's Agricultural Bulletins-a place-based guide to transforming degraded landscapes into vibrant, food-producing ones.
Learn more about the Landscape Architecture Foundation's Olmsted Scholars program: www.lafoundati...