The Department of Floristic Welfare is an anti-authoritarian and nonviolent group of international artists who bring direct action to threatened ecosystems. They use fiercely playful methods to focus attention on the drivers of environmental extraction and systemic oppression. The Department is always accepting new members.

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The mission of the Department of Floristic Welfare is to protect the natural world by disrupting extractive capitalism to resist oppression and ecocide. Working with the botanical world, we recognize that plants and their kin exist not as resources to be managed, but as beings that deserve to live and die well together. Across the Mojave Desert, large-scale solar is proposed as a solution to climate change and a way to meet California’s energy goals, however numerous studies have determined that these farms are environmentally destructive and energetically inefficient. Industrial scale solar farms will destroy critical habitats and many thousands of threatened Joshua trees. Each Joshua tree requires a permit for removal accompanied by a fee which can be as high as several thousand dollars. These fees are then used to purchase and protect other prime Joshua tree habitats, a version of capitalist driven species conservation.

 

What if a field of baby Joshua trees were planted overnight on pre-developed solar sites driving up the cost? What kind of tools exist at the nexus of ecological restoration, activism, and institutional interventions? 

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Decentralized desert solar belongs on rooftops, parking structures, and degraded landscapes.

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The department has been installed in museums, galleries, and other institutional spaces with many additional contributing artists. The workspace includes a solar powered desk that provides light to Joshua tree nurse plant seedlings which are transplanted into restoration sites.