Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change

Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change

October 2025 – January 2026

Please join us for the artist’s reception on Sunday, October 26 from 3-5pm.

Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change is more than a coffee table book and art exhibit—it’s a 30-year documentary project that blends conservation photography with telling the wildflowers’ story. Award-winning photographers Rob Badger and Nita Winter capture both the dazzling colors of superbloom landscapes and the intimate details of delicate floral portraits. Together, these images reveal California’s extraordinary biodiversity and highlight the threats wildflowers face from climate change, habitat loss, and development.

At the Botanical Garden, visitors will experience a curated selection of works that span California’s varied regions—from the desert valleys shimmering with blossoms and the magical coastal range hillsides, to beautiful mountain species and the brilliant carpets of wildflowers covering the grasslands above Gorman. Text panels accompany the photographs, weaving together science, art, and advocacy to show how fragile these ecosystems are—and how deeply they matter to the plants, pollinators, wildlife, and people who depend on them.

Artist Statement – Rob Badger & Nita Winter

For nearly four decades, we have shared our lives and combined our talents to reveal the beauty, diversity, and resilience of both people and the natural world. In 1992, standing in the heart of a desert superbloom, we were spellbound. The hills shimmered in waves of color, alive with blossoms that seemed to breathe with the wind. That moment changed our lives—it set us on a path to honor wildflowers, fragile yet fierce, through photography and story.

Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change grew from that experience into a decades-long journey. Each image is both a celebration and a call: a reminder of what we stand to lose, and an invitation to cherish and protect it.

Through this work, we hope visitors feel not only the joy of wildflowers, but also a renewed connection to the landscapes that sustain us all. Beauty can open the heart; story can open the mind. Together, they can inspire action.

May these images remind us that protecting nature is not only about preservation—it is about belonging. Each wildflower is a thread in the fabric of life, and each of us is woven into that same cloth. Learn more at wildflowerbooks.com