Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and W. EB Dubois are some of the many recognizable names of an intellectual cultural and artistic period in American history known as the Harlem Renaissance. This week, CP Guest Host Abra Lee is in conversation with Reverend Jerri Mitchell-Lee. They enjoy a deep dive into the history of Effie Lee Newsome, another highly respected writer - and gardener - of the Harlem Renaissance. Reverend Mitchell-Lee shares more about this undersung American literary and garden figure from her unique familial perspective: Effie is her beloved great aunt. Effie Lee Newsome was a quintessential multi-hyphenate: she was an artist, nature writer, gardener, author, naturalist, birder, and favorite poet of the Harlem Renaissance elite. Through her groundbreaking children’s book, Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors (The Associated Publishers, 1940), she became a powerful piece in the puzzle of not only the Harlem Renaissance but also American garden history. In June of 2022, a class of Landscape Architecture Students from Auburn University used the poetry and plants of Effie Lee Newsome as their inspiration for an award-winning display garden at the Philadelphia Flower Show. Reverend Mitchell-Lee is an accomplished writer, author, and businesswoman. She has a passion for serving and continues to do so as a health educator, mental health counselor, and workshop trainer. She received her education at Sterling College, University of Kansas, Rutgers University of Medicine and Dentistry, Howard School of Theology, and Newark School of Theology. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

The wilds of New Jersey might sound like a humorous oxymoron to many – many who don’t live in New Jersey. Humor is one of our guests' great traits this week, along with his deep love of the plants and places making up New Jersey and its wilds—whether scrappy and unlikely roadside verges or extant majestic old-growth forests.   Jared Rosenbaum and his wife Rachel Mackow own and operate New Jersey’s Wild Ridge Plants, an all-native, all-natural, all-nursery-propagated endeavor in Alpha, New Jersey.  Jared is also the face and voice behind the Wild Plant Culture Podcast, and, along with documentary filmmaker Jared Flesher, Jared Rosenbaum is the host of the Rooted Series of Wild Plant videos. A certified ecological restoration practitioner and author of Wild Plant Culture, A Guide to Restoring Native Edible and Medicinal Plant Communities, Jared has an abiding curiosity about the intersection of ecology and culture. From his deeply rooted place there in New Jersey – I am so pleased to welcome Jared to Cultivating Place this week – join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week, we’re so excited to air the first listen to one of our CP LIVE conversations, which were recorded live in front of an audience on the home ground of the Cultivators of Place with whom we are speaking. I am so thrilled to kick the airing of this series off on my own home ground in Northern California - back in conversation with Sandy Fisher and Durl Van Alstyne of Golden State Linen, previously known as Chico Flax. A regenerative fiber project based in California’s North State, Golden State Linen is regenerative fiber farming as a part of the Fibershed Network – and as such, they’re growing biodiversity, community, economy, and linen. Now, that is a beautiful fabric of life. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Amanda Thomsen is a horticulturist, garden designer, keynote speaker, freelance writer, backyard consultant, and author living in suburban Chicago. Amanda wants to help the world live more sustainably (but without a load of effort and twice the fun!). Amanda has been a professional horticulturist, landscape designer, and project manager for the past twenty-plus years. Her focus is bringing rule-breaking fun, a little kitsch, and a lot of humor into an industry that is often thought of as stodgy and full of rules. Amanda speaks and gives classes at events of all sizes throughout the United States. Many of you will remember Cultivating Place's previous conversation with Amanda Thomsen back in the spring of 2019 about her latest book, “Backyard Adventure: Get Messy, Get Wet, Build Cool Things, and Have Tons of Fun.”  In 2022, she opened a plant shop in the small, midwestern town and Chicago suburb of Lemont, IL. Today, Amanda is back to share with us her journey to becoming a business owner, building community, and growing more than just plants. Their motto: "Practical, fun, imperfect gardens for everyone!" It’s a fun, funny, heartbreaking, uplifting, and very candid conversation about the business of Cultivating Place, and how small plant businesses can be integral to Cultivating Place well and in community. IN ADDITION, this is the first CP episode featuring one of our two new regular guest hosts: Ben Futa of Botany, a growing plant-based endeavor in South Bend, Indiana. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Dr. Alan Weakley is a career-long botanist and conservation biologist firmly rooted in the southeast region of the U.S. For a little over 23 years, Dr. Weakley has served as the director of the UNC Chapel Hill Herbarium, which since 2000 has been part of the North Carolina Botanical Garden. Throughout his career, from his PhD work to his professorial and director duties and community engagement work, Dr. Weakley’s focus has remained on the rich biodiversity of plants and plant community systems of the Southeast. In his experience, this is one clear way to work toward conserving biodiversity writ large. An exhibit Dr. Weakley and the Herbarium helped to create, Saving our Savannahs, Stories of the Longleaf Pine, will be on display at the North Carolina Botanical Garden through December 2024. In our conversation, Alan describes the ongoing and ever-increasing importance of herbaria and the expansive collaborative relationship possible between the UNC-Chapel Hill Herbarium and North Carolina Botanical Garden now that they are fully integrated. One example of that is this new exhibit designed to engage and educate the public about this beloved ecosystem of the Southeast.  As he poignantly notes: “At a time of a biodiversity crisis and the sixth great extinction, herbaria are really more important than ever. And provide more critical resource than ever before... We can only move forward with conserving the biodiversity of our rich region, if we know what that biodiversity it, if we know where it is, if we know how to manage it. Ultimately we’ll end up conserving biodiversity only if the people want to, only if we care about it." In listening to the scope of Dr. Weakley’s work and recalling his early reference to his well-loved and well used book-form Peterson Field Guides as a younger person, it occurs to me that the legacy of his work (and others like him) is much like a trusted field guide we carry with us to know more about exactly where we are. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Erin Benzakein of Floret Flower Farm needs little introduction to most garden-minded listeners. She has been so instrumental is cultivating a flower-farmer and flower-farming economy in our country. Her innovative and dedicated seed research and breeding work of the past almost decade, however, is whole new lens through which to appreciate her work. Back in 2017, when I first interviewed Erin for the program & for The Earth in Her Hands, she was already a tireless advocate for local flowers, and for supporting more flower farmers and local-flower florists in our everyday lives here in the US. Through her on-farm and subsequently online flower farming Floret Workshops, for more than a decade, she has been renowned for encouraging and training eager new flower-farmer-florists in order to transform the cut flower industry from the multi-billion dollar large-corporate-owned international import (with little ecological or economic oversight) behemoth it had become, back into the more lovely, and loving, organic, locally-based circular and community oriented economy she envisioned it could be – and should be. Floret - once a flower farm and training center – is now more fully (and perhaps even more beautifully) described as “a family-owned flower farm and seed company specializing in breeding new cut flower varieties for gardeners, farmers & designers.” They add: “ Our thriving research & education farm is dedicated to giving flower lovers the tools & information they need to grow the gardens of their dreams.” In honor of the Autumnal Equinox, and its seeds of the next season feeling - I am so pleased to once again welcome Erin to Cultivating Place – just as Floret's free seed saving mini-course launches on their website. Erin shares much more about this newest heart of Floret's growing work. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

One day in his mid-adulthood, at a particularly low point after many years of battling debilitating depression, Jarod K. Anderson witnessed the presence of a Great Blue Heron fishing in a creek in the woods near his home. In the opening pages of his new book, Something in the Woods Loves You, he describes the transformative moment of meeting this “poem of ancient slowness” as a “bridge to when nature was family.” Jarod is the poet and nature enthusiast behind the popular scripted fiction podcast The CryptoNaturalist - about real love for imaginary nature. In Something in the Woods Loves You (out this week from Hachette), Jarod poignantly shares how real nature, and its lessons as to our human place within it, was one of his primary allies along his mental health journey, helping to bring him home to himself. Jarod joins Cultivating Place this week to share more about his love of nature, his garden life, and his thoughts on how an improved relationship with nature is key to everyone’s health (mental and physical), including the health of the planet we live on and her nature. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week, in honor of Labor Day just passed, we venture into the world of garden preservation, history through the lens of spaces of incarceration, and how these can help all of us consider, with clearer eyes, the great diversity of ways in which the word Garden is used. We’re in conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Lara, a cultural geographer and Garden Historian who is looking at the role and uses of gardens in spaces of incarceration—historic and contemporary—and what this might teach us as gardeners and as a society as we look forward and back. Dr. Lara earned her doctorate through extensive research at Mission Santa Barbara, the Gardens of Alcatraz, and Manzanar National Historic Site. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

At this back-to-school, change-of-seasons moment, I thought we would all enjoy a good bedtime-story vibe. Enjoy this Best of CP conversation with Gwendolyn Wallace.  Gwendolyn Wallace is a gardener, a student, a teacher, a historian, and the author of two new works of illustrated children’s literature. Joy Takes Root, and The Light She Feels Inside (both published this year) are works grounded in the human impulse to garden. In words, stories, and images these additions to the world of children’s literature help to grow us all. Using her own history and experience with gardens and gardening, Gwendolyn’s stories remind us (no matter our age) that our gardens raise and tend to us as much as we raise and tend to them! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week, A BEST OF conversation. In this long, hot, fiery summer here in Northern CA and wet and windy summer in other parts of the country – I really needed some flowers – and thought our conversation with the UK’s Shane Connolly might be just the thing. ENJOY! As we tend toward summer’s end, with end of summer and fall events and celebrations perhaps in mind, maybe even winter events in the planning, we turn this week to floristry and how and where it intersects with sustainability – and as our guest today shares, with thoughtfulness. British floral designer Shane Connolly is well-known for his world-class floristry and floral design, which gracing several weddings within the British Royal Family and the recent coronation of King Charles. While his floral design is known for this kind of high-profile event, Shane is also known as one of the preeminent ambassadors for a more sustainable, organic, local, seasonal, and low-waste floral design and floral supply industry.  Cultivating Place now has a donate button! Thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

It’s back to school time – you can tell by the ads on television and radio (yes, I was watching the Olympics!) and by the displays at the stores with notebooks, pencils, backpacks, and lunch boxes being on prominent display. As you and I know, one of the best classrooms available to us all is the outdoors – from the wildlands of fields, woods, and waysides around us to more formal state and national parks and monuments, our own gardens, and very specifically, our many public gardens. Being outdoors is a great classroom, and plants are among our best teachers. Joining me this week to explore all of this and more is Sean Doherty, a gardener, a plant lover, a 25-year-career public educator: in the classroom, as a principal, and for six years as a St. Louis School’s district superintendent. Sean is now the Vice President of Education at the Missouri Botanical Garden in downtown St. Louis. From school groups to mindfulness walks, botanical art, and identification classes to therapeutic horticulture, from seed banking to historic herbarium collections, this botanic garden in St. Louis continues to expand how they and we think about the phenomenal educational capacity and imperative of plants and their conservation. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! Thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Late July, August, and September (the dog days of summer with the constellation Sirius high in the night sky) are perhaps the stretch of the year in most climates of the Northern Hemisphere that really show you what your garden and plants are made of (for better or worse) after months of them producing and growing under long hours of sun, high heat, and either humidity or drought. Or smoke. It’s also the season when many of our most durable and prismatic shrubs are showing off to great advantage in rounded forms, seed, fruit, and foliage colors, certainly in our wildlands. And possibly in our gardens? This is where Kevin Philip Williams and Michael Guidi of the Denver Botanic Gardens come in. Their new book Shrouded in Light: Naturalistic Planting Inspired by Wild Shrublands celebrates the great diversity, incredible beauty, and many gifts and lessons that the wild shrublands of our world have to offer our gardens and cultivated landscapes—environmentally and aesthetically—no matter where you garden. I want to echo Kevin and Michael’s email greeting when I invited them to be guests on Cultivating Place: Welcome to the Shrub Club! Enjoy. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Tim Johnson is engaged in the native plant and garden worlds on both personal and professional levels. Having worked with Seed Savers Exchange earlier in his career, Tim last joined us on Cultivating Place a few years back as Executive Director for The Botanic Garden of Smith College. Tim is a spouse, a father, a life long learner and gardener, and since January of this year, he is the CEO of the Native Plant Trust. He is leading this oldest of U.S. plant conservation organizations into its 125th year working to conserve the great biodiversity of native plants in our world starting with their place in the U.S. Northeast. We caught up with him this week to learn more about Tim’s botanical journey and to discuss some of the Native Plant Trust’s past, present, and future vision. This vision is both on the ground, including their part in manifesting the new Northeast Native Seed Network as foundational to shifting the possibilities for great native plant supply for all landscapes, and increasingly, this vision is in policy at all levels of local and federal government.  NPT is collaborating with other plant conservation people around the country and world, and serve as a model for how good plant stewardship can literally grow our world better. Join us this week! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Working under the online name Trackless Wild, Janisse Ray is an American writer, naturalist, and environmental activist. Just about everything she does speaks to me of the largest meaning and importance of what it means to be a capital G gardener in our world. A moving storyteller, speaker, and teacher, her book titles include Ecology of A Cracker Childhood (1999), a memoir; Wild Spectacle, Seeking Wonders in A World Beyond Humans (2021), a collection of essays; Red Lanterns (2021), a collection of poems; The Woods of Fannin County (2023), a novel, and many more. Her most recent title is based on her many years teaching writing, particularly place-based creative non-fiction: Craft & Current, A Manual for Magical Writing. Her acclaimed work has earned Janisse a Pushcart Prize, an American Book Award, the Green Prize for Sustainable Literature, a Nautilus Award, and the Arlene Eisenberg Award for Writing that Matters, among other well-deserved awards. For me, the most striking aspect of her talents (expressed ardently across genres) is the precision with which she lovingly gives voice to her own place, specifically her home ground of rural South Georgia’s uplands and coastal plains – and from there, the greater U.S. Southeast generally. The climatic and seasonal fluctuations and moods of the flora and fauna across mountains, and meadows, roadside verges and meandering creeks, Janisse is always documenting the lives and ground out of which places grow people. Her work Seed Underground, A Growing Revolution to Save Food (2012), was one of handful of books about the poetics and politics of seed and seed people in their places that inspired me in my writing of What We Sow, On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds (2023) (along with the likes of Henry David Thoreau’s posthumously-published writings on seed dispersal, and Gary Nabhan’s Enduring Seed). While very much rooted in the Southeast, Janisse, like all great nature writers, gives voice to the importance of all places through her devotion to her singular place. Janisse’s teaching (online and at various universities across her career) focuses on encouraging the practice of place-based, heartfelt observation and writing as a way to grow better people, and therefore as a way to durably tend to all places. Janisse joins Cultivating Place this week to explore what it means to be devoted to place - in word, action, and spirit. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we revisit a favorite conversation from the archive, “The Comfort of Crows, A Backyard Year," with author and backyard tender and observer, Margaret Renkl. Reminding us that even on days when we feel overheated and overwhelmed, there is always some comfort, intelligence, and agency to be found among the flora and fauna of this generous planet. Many of you will remember our previous conversation with writer and gardener Margaret Renkl about one of her previous titles, “Late Migrations.” Her opinion pieces in The New York Times document the nature of our humanity weekly. I am so pleased to welcome her back this week to share more about her newest title – what is aptly described as “a literary and nature- based devotional” from one of our favorite backyard nature devotees. Join us, this week. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

“Are Humans Parasites sowing our own hunger, or fruit, gifts from Earth to our future? Is the edge of our lives, civilization, and species a cliff to catastrophe or a bridge to transformation?” These are the words, questions, and motivations of poet and gardener, Frederick Livingston author of Trees are Bridges to the Sky a collection of essays and poems exploring the human/climate connection. I first met Frederick when I served as keynote speaker for the National Native Seed Conference earlier this year. The conference was kicked off by an address from Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, and another by Tracy Stone-Manning, Director of the Bureau of Land Management, both of whom preceded me on the first day.  The two days of events were punctuated throughout by readings from Frederick – the Conference poet. The fact that this conference of policy makers and advocates across such a range had a Conference Poet at all, says a lot. The fact that their chosen poet was Frederick, says even more.   Frederick has studied and practiced sustainable agriculture, experiential education, and peace building across the world and he joins us this week to share more. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and see more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

It’s the seedy time of summer. This week of the fourth of July we’re working from the premise that foundational to good citizenship is great stewardship of place (plants and people) and we are looking to the desert Southwest in conversation with Alexandra Zamecnik, Executive Director of Native Seed/SEARCH. For more than four decades, Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) has stewarded the seeds of the desert Southwest and Mexico. Founded in 1983 in response to the concern of farmers, gardeners, Indigenous community members, and conservationists about the devastating loss of seed diversity, NS/S today conserves more than 1,800 regional culturally and climatically significant seed varieties. The work is not only the preservation of these seeds for the future, but also for their distribution today, celebrating and in support of communities of this desert region who have stewarded these seeds for time far longer than memory. I met Alexandra and many of her team back in 2021, while researching What We Sow took me to the NS/S HQ in Tucson. I am so pleased to welcome her and share this growing work forward finally. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and see more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

It’s full summer - for us and for the fauna of the Northern Hemisphere.  That means many of our most charismatic, sun-loving pollinators are at the peak of their seasonal cycles – and we are celebrating National Pollinator Week with Tora Rocha of the Pollinator Posse based in Oakland, CA – sharing all things love of pollinators. Tora is a gardener and ecosystem steward, leader, and innovator in public gardening. Along with Terry Smith, a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) education specialist, in 2012 Tora co-founded the Pollinator Posse, an Oakland, CA-based organization developing and encouraging pollinator-friendly landscaping and fostering appreciation for local ecosystems through outreach, education, community science, and habitat creation. With eco-friendly landscape techniques at the heart of the work, they teach respect for the creatures which keep their place — and the world — blooming. Tora and the Pollinator Posse envision a day when life-enhancing, thought-inspiring green spaces will grace every corner of world. Tora joins Cultivating Place this week to share her garden-life, Pollinator Posse, journey story. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and see more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Happy (almost) Summer Solstice! In celebration of the planetary moment of the longest day and the shortest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, taking place on June 20th, we get Still. We hold a moment of stillness to notice and honor our places, our selves, and our many companions in time and space. We’re in conversation with Artist/Photographer Mary Jo Hoffman all about her more than a decade-long daily photographic practice and her new book: Still: The Art of Noticing. From my seat, the act of being still and the art of noticing are perfect intentions for any season. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and see more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In honor of Juneteenth celebrations coming up, we check in on the Anne Spencer House & Garden in Lynchburg, VA. The home and garden of Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer and her husband Edward, this garden remains the only known fully restored historic garden of an African American in the U.S. We’re in conversation with Anne and Edward’s granddaughter, Shaun Spencer-Hester – who serves as the Executive Director and Curator of the House & Garden Museum. Shaun shares so much more information on the history, including new discoveries, the present, and the vibrant future of this important historic treasure of a garden and its gardeners. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and see more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Cultivating our places with attention, intention, thought and care is certainly an ethos I hold dear and advocate for with some measure of ferocity. When student and gardener Félix de Rosen reached out to me in 2021 seeking advice on a new book project. His thinking and design resonated with me, and we have communicated back and forth ever since.  Now an ecological designer and artist, and graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard University, Félix’s design practice, Polycultura Studio, is based in Oakland, California, on traditional Ohlone territory. His now published book is: A Garden’s Purpose, which invites us to understand gardens as places where we build mutually beneficial relationships with the living world around us. Amen to that.  Félix joins me this week on Cultivating Place to share much more about his garden life journey, his philosophy, and the experience of considering the idea of "a Garden’s purpose” from a multitude of perspectives. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and see more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

With the Chelsea Flower Show in the UK just completed, the gardening world as a whole has the concept of Garden Design awards and recognition - along with the garden world’s trends, concerns and priorities - top of mind. Such display and attention – and recognition well beyond the garden world – has the potential to move hearts and minds and, more importantly, to change minds and behaviors. We hope for the better. In 2023, Pacific Horticulture, a non-profit leader in horticultural thinking and gardening up and down the Pacific Region of the US since 1976 (and rooted back even earlier), jumped into the arena of how we encourage, celebrate, recognize, and even incentivize garden design when they launched their inaugural Design Futurist awards. These awards demonstrate the power of garden design to achieve climate resilience, steward biodiversity, and connect people with nature. In 2023, the first year of the awards, “visionary designers and regional plantspeople submitted designs illustrating that our gardens can conserve plants and wildlife, treat our water and soil as precious, and hold the wellbeing of people at their center.” The Design Futurist Awards celebrate “garden design that is easily replicable, modest in scale, or designed for intimate neighborhood community use” and I hope serve as a model for how to not just award but reward good garden design anywhere and everywhere. This week, Sarah Beck Pacific Horticulture’s Executive Director joins Cultivating Place to share more about the process and purpose of these awards – entries for which are being accepted now through July 26th, 2024. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and see more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we’re in conversation with Kristen Bradley, Co-founder and Creative Director of the world-renowned Australian-based Milkwood Permaculture.  Their new Milkwood Permaculture Living Handbook is another perfect resource for our summer garden (and life) plotting, planning, and planting, with an emphasis on garden-life-based habits for hope in a changing world. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and see more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Just in time for your continued planning, plotting, and planting in order to grow the earliest and the latest and the biggest and the longest producing and the best tasting of the summer vegetable and fruit bounty, this week Cultivating Place returns to our intermittent series on seeds in conversation with Adam Alexander, author of The Seed Detective, Uncovering the Secret Histories of Remarkable Vegetables. This conversation and gardening human go to show—once again—that all of life (and the histories of humans with their plants in their places) can be found in the garden if we’re looking. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and see more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Bevin Cohen and his wife Heather Marie co-founded Small House Farm, a homestead, garden, family, and bridge to the natural world around them. Bevin writes: “The garden is where we meditate, harvest our seeds and learn about Mother Nature’s many wonders. We are avid seed savers, and amateur plant breeders. We believe that each seed is a connection to every grower that stewarded that variety before us – and every rower that comes after us.” Through his books, his educational workshops and lectures, and now through his podcast, Seeds and Weeds, Bevin shares his small-farm big-life heartfelt world view. In our ongoing exploration of who gardeners are, where gardeners are and what they are growing in this world, I am so pleased to be in conversation with Bevin this week. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and see more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com. All photos courtesy of Bevin Cohen, Small House Farm. All rights reserved.

To kick off May, looking forward to Mother’s Day, Graduations, and the promise of Summer Gardening in general here in the US, this week we go all in for flowers in pots! with one of the world’s bright gardens and floral stars: Sarah Raven. Her newest book: A Year Full of Pots Container Flowers for All Seasons (Bloomsbury Press, 2024) notes that pots in the garden are like "bubbles in a glass of champagne. In the past 25 years, Sarah has been a leadership voice in beautiful and productive gardening through her trial and research garden at Perch Hill, her many books and in-person educational offerings, and now through her podcast: Grow, Cook, Eat, Arrange. What could be a better way to welcome May? Enjoy. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and see more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

The third week of April is California Native Plant week, this year being celebrated by the California Native Plant Society via 8 days of action in honor and protection of our native plant diversity. Our celebratory action item here at Cultivating Place is being in conversation this week with Aaron Sims, Director of the Rare Plant Program for CNPS. 2024 year marks the 50th anniversary of the CNPS Rare Plant Inventory, tracking and analyzing rare plants and their status across the floristic province to help fight extinction (and subsequent biodiversity loss), to engage citizen scientists, including gardeners, across the state, and to inform land use decisions statewide. Along with the beauty, joy, and life sustaining qualities of our native plant flora whereever we might live and garden, that is all worth celebrating. Happy Native Plant (rare and common) Gardening to you - listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Following on from native plant week, this week we revisit a BEST OF conversation about some of our favorite native plant visitors: our native bumble bees. Bumble bee conservation has recently had some good news: the Xerces Society recently kicked off their newest Bumble Bee Atlas project, this time in the US Midwest. With that in mind, please enjoy our conversation from 2023 with Leif Richardson, Conservation Biologist with the Xerces Society, sharing so much about conservation, about bumble bees, about the nation-wide Bumble Bee Atlas projects generally, and his spearheading of the California Bumble Bee Atlas.

Hummingbirds are a beloved and charismatic creature of the America’s, the more than 350 species of hummingbirds have coevolved with the flora of the Americas for millions of years. For this fourth week in our series of 5 episodes on our gardens as important habitat and we gardeners as important stewards of land and biodiversity, we check in on the state of things for the Hummingbird. Cultivating Place is joined in this by Dr. Susan Wethington, research scientist, Program Developer and Executive Director of the Hummingbird Monitoring Network, based in Arizona. "Hummingbirds are unique in that every culture that lives with hummingbirds has a positive interaction with hummingbirds and it seems to me that if we can maintain hummingbird diversity in this world - because we all love them - then we have a chance to maintain biodiversity in other species that are so critical in our functioning natural world. That if we can let one animal into our hearts - the others can follow." Dr. Susan Wethington, Executive Director, The Hummingbird Network The hummingbirds are among our smallest of birds, but our largest – and of course avian – pollinators. These little birds, many of which migrate vast distances, need to drink more than their body weight in nectar every day, and are voracious and effective insectivore. Having co-evolved with the native flora of the Americans – including with the vast diversity of salvias, penstemons, lobelia, agastache, manzanitas, honeysuckles and more – they love nothing more than beautiful flowering native or other nectar/pollen rich plants in our gardens to help them on their way. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week, with Spring and seeding season fully underway—indoors and out—we speak with gardener entrepreneur Anne Fletcher of Orta Kitchen Gardens, creators of non-toxic ceramic, self-watering Orta seed pots. These pots' material lives help eliminate plastic right from the start in your plants’ growing lives, seeding more circularity into our garden lives! They have a seed club, too….Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

To round out Women’s History Month in style, this week, we are back in conversation with Leslie Bennett, an Oakland, CA-based landscape designer who creates gardens that help to nourish and tell the story of who we are, individually and communally. Leslie lives out her horticultural and cultural ethos in her landscape design work with Pine House Edible Gardens and Black Sanctuary Gardens, as well as in her writing and advocacy. Her newest book, Garden Wonderland, written in collaboration with Julie Chai and photographed by Rachel Weill, will be published on April 2nd from Ten Speed Press.  Garden Wonderland brings together all of Leslie’s wisdom, spirit, experience, and paradigm-shifting passions while also bringing together the power of women and gardens. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

The Great Unlawning of America has been underway for some time now, and as we have just crossed the threshold of the spring equinox earlier this week, I want to celebrate how far we have come and give us all a forceful nudge to help us stay the path with the many millions of acres of the progress we have to go in this work to trade lifeless monoculture chemically dependent lawns for a happy healthy habitat. This work was given a beautiful boost in 2020 with the publication of Owen Wormser’s book Lawns into Meadows, Growing a Regenerative Landscape (updated second edition out now in paperback!) Owen is a gardener, designer, author and ecological gardening advocate working under the name of Abound Design, based in Western Massachusetts. In honor of the vernal equinox pulling us into the light, enjoy this conversation with Owen Wormser. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

The combining of sculpture and gardens dates back centuries if not millennia, and there are few public gardens I know of that do not incorporate sculpture into their aesthetics and identity at some point. This week we are in conversation with an exemplary public garden, whose identity grows out of this pairing: the art of horticulture and the art of sculpture. The Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan is “proudly ranked as one of the top 45 most visited museums in the world” and their award winning gardens “showcase over 200 captivating sculptures,” inviting visitor to experience what they see as the “perfect blend of art and nature.” We’re joined this week by Steve LaWarre, the Vice President of Horticulture at Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park to share more. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Happy Women’s History Month! To kick Women’s History Month off on Cultivating Place, we visit with the woman known as the Queen of Herbs, Jekka McVicar of Jekka’s Herb Farm in the UK this week. Her long and notable career has brought the gardened world the best the herbs of the world have to offer to our gardens, to our environments, to our kitchens, and to our souls. In recognition of her herbal research, plant breeding, garden designing, and advocacy around the many merits of all manner of herbs to the garden world these past 40 years, Jekka has been awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour in Horticulture by the Royal Horticultural Society and the Gardeners Media Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as 62 RHS Gold Medals. At Jekka’s Herb Farm and Herbetum in South Gloucestershire, she displays her life’s collection of more than 600 culinary, medicinal, pollinator-supporting, and beautiful herbs. I was honored to profile Jekka in my 2020 book, The Earth In Her Hands, 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants, as one of the women leaders in our horticultural world who have expanded and elevated the way we think and talk about gardening. Jekka’s newest book, 100 Herbs to Grow A Comprehensive Guide to the Best Culinary and Medicinal Herbs publishes from Quadrille Press in march of 2024. Savor! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Most gardeners know the somewhat gruesome pleasure of working in the garden – with a sharp tool, or a poisonous plant, or ankle deep in a juicy scene of decomposition – and thinking to yourself, “oh, this would be a great scene for a murder mystery.” Writer and gardener Marta McDowell is with us this week for our Leap Day Special - sharing more about her newest title Gardening Can Be Murder: How Poisonous Poppies, Sinister Shovels, and Grim Gardens Have Inspired Mystery Writers, in which she delves into the literary history of mysteries and crime fiction being long inspired by life and death in the garden. It’s an oddly fun romp into the overlapping worlds of mystery and crime fiction with gardens and gardeners. Join us! All images courtesy of Marta McDowell, illustrations by Yolanda Fundora, all rights reserved.

This week we lean into a particular aspect of our garden lives – but perhaps a favorite winter activity in the northerly climates in winter: tending to our houseplant and indoor garden family. We’re in conversation with Jane Perrone, host of the “On The Ledge” Podcast, and author of “Legends of the Leaf: Unearthing the secrets to help your plants thrive”. In this deep end of the winter season, when our indoor gardening might be holding us through till we can get back outside, Jane shares more about her many plant love motivations. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In our ongoing exploration of who gardeners are, where gardeners are, what they are growing in this world, and why that matters to all of us, I am so excited to be joined this week by Brent Leggs, Senior Vice President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Executive Director of the Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, whose mission focuses on telling the full American story. The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund holds a vision of preservation serving as a potential path for equity. The fund is actively working to preserve the landscapes and buildings of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Historic Black Churches, the Washington Rosenwald Schools, as well as the homes and gardens of cultural icons such as Madame C.J. Walker, musicians John and Alice Coltrane, singer/songwriter Nina Simone, and Harlem Renaissance poet and gardener Anne Spencer. The Action Fund is also partnering with community members in Akron, Ohio, on re-creating a public plaza space to preserve the historic activism of once-enslaved abolitionist and author Sojourner Truth, who delivered her “Ain’t I a Woman” speech in Akron in 1851. This is a very personal conversation but also a universal love story of the heritage and history held in our places and the importance of that fullness to all of us. Listen In! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In our ongoing exploration of who gardeners are, where gardeners are, what they are growing in this world, and why that matters to all of us, we use this midwinter moment for a mid-winter retreat. We head south to the Keenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center and their remarkable Cherokee Garden Library – named for the historic Cherokee rose, prevalent across the south. Staci Catron has been the Library’s Director since 2000, and Jennie Oldfield is the collection’s Senior Technical Librarian/Supervisory Archivist. The two join Cultivating Place this week to share so much more about the fertile ground of their work – enriching all of our garden lives. The three of us discuss the importance of horticultural and garden library collections for preserving the past and enlivening our present and future. As a result of their work in archiving, research, and exhibitions, this conversation continues our celebrations of Black History Month, and it will pair nicely with a warm cup of something on a cold afternoon. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and see many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Camille Dungy is perhaps best known for her remarkable and award-winning, often environmentally focused poetry and editing of collections of environmentally focused poetry and writing by people of color exploring the intersections of gender, race, art, environment, and culture. In honor of Black History Month, we revisit this best-of conversation with Camille from May of 2023. Just as her newest title, Soil, The Story of A Black Mother’s Garden was published by Simon & Schuster. Soil is a rich exploration into and celebration of ancestry and being an ancestor; about what it means to be human, about motherhood, writing, gardening, biodiversity, grief, beauty, joy, and above all, Soil is about the tenacious hope for better growth. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In our ongoing exploration of who gardeners are, where gardeners are, what they are growing in this world, and why that matters to all of us, I am pleased to be joined this week by three members of the team at The Institute for Applied Ecology – literally ecology in action. Their mission is to conserve native species and their habitats through restoration, research, and education. They envision a world where all people and wildlands are healthy and interact positively, biological diversity flourishes, and environmental challenges are met with a social commitment to solving problems with scientific principles. And in many ways, this all comes back to an abundant and healthy seed supply. This brings us to the Institute’s Native Seed Network and their coordination of their upcoming National Native Seed Conference, being held virtually Feb 7th and 8th. The conference connects research, industry, land management, and restoration professionals, providing the premier opportunity to develop relationships and share information about the collection, research and development, production, and use of native plant materials. Given that gardeners are land managers in their own right, this is the kind of information that informs good garden decision-making for all of us. And I am excited to serve as the keynote speaker for the event. Alexis Larsen, Program Director for the Institute's Plant Materials Program, Morgan Franke, the Program Coordinator for the Plant Materials Program, and Tom Kaye, the Institute’s co-founder, Executive Director, and Senior Ecologist, join Cultivating Place this week to share so much more about the past, present, and future of this important work. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Did you know that grasslands account for between 20 and 40 percent of the world's land area? Generally open, fairly flat, and accessible, they exist on every continent except Antarctica. Ecologically as important as but different from other large ecoregion types such as forests or deserts, grasslands are even more vulnerable to pressure from human populations – for settling, planting, livestock, and development. Threats to natural grasslands, as well as the wildlife that live on them, include farming, overgrazing, invasive species, illegal hunting, and climate change. At the same time, one study found California's grasslands and rangelands could store more carbon than forests because they are less susceptible to wildfires and drought. Still, less than 10 percent—of the world's grassland is currently protected in large part due to a lack of understanding of their ecological role. Which is where Dr. Justin Luong comes in. Grassland ecosystems fill an ecological role as important as and different than our charismatic forests, our extreme deserts, and our coastal or chaparral scrub. And in fact, much of the general home garden lanscapes with their mix of perennial flowers, annual vegetables, and grasses, in many ways mimic grassland meadows. Ecologist and educator Dr. Justin Luong of Cal Poly Humboldt joins Cultivating Place this week to share more about his journey (including being a worm wrangler) in science, practice, and education focused on biodiversity and climate resiliency, most recently through grassland restoration ecology. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we hear the magical story of how two gardeners, separated by time, came together to grow all of our imaginations. May Sarton was a 20th—century writer known for her poetry, novels, and personal journals illuminating the landscape of the human heart and mind. She was also a lifelong and avid gardener. She spent the last 22 years of her life on the coast of Maine in a house and garden called Wild Knoll, now a part of the Surf Point Artist In Residence Program. Carly Glovinski is an artist working in a wide array of mediums that balance between craft, utility, and art.  She joins us today to tell the story of how she helped reimagine May Sarton’s former house site as a garden and to re-establish Sartons’s extant gardens using  Sarton’s well-known journal “The House by the Sea” as her guide. It's an inspiring story of how we all existentially garden with one another in so many ways, entwined across time and space, and how we garden the past, present, and future simultaneously. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Esme Cabrera is an artist, a naturalist, and a born educator. Under the Instagram name “la-mamigami", Esme experiments, shares, and nurtures a plant-based art practice honoring the "miracles-of-being" that are the native plants around her. Exploring their spirit, medicine, history and culture, mathematical, scientific, and sacred patterns with curiosity and deep observation is integral to Esme's California native plant origami designs.  Following her efforts to know these plants intimately enough to fold them provides us ALL with a portal to creatively reimagine our collective and growing ways forward. Ingenious, colorful, biodiverse, full of play, discovery, a community of sharing, and plant-and-place-centric, I cannot imagine a more powerful blessing to usher in the new year than this conversation. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

We opened up 2023 here on Cultivating Place, focusing on biodiversity, and we close the year similarly, with diverse plant community thinking getting the final say. We’re in conversation with Cornwall-based ecological landscape designer Sid Hill, a land and ecological artisan who creates beautiful, abundant, and thoughtful places. Sid challenges himself, his clients, and the broader horticultural world to keep going and to go even further in rethinking and reimagining how horticulture is practiced and thought of in our world. A believer in the ability of intentional and well-thought-out design to help our gardens help the world in moderating so many of the challenges ahead, Sid asks us to think like the plant and animal communities, as well as the indigenous human communities that are, and have been, foundational to the uniqueness of our places. He asks us to think like healthy habitats and their dynamic patterns as we look to the future – as we grow the future. I think this plant-and-ecology-of-place-centric thinking is a perfect way to close out 2023 and herald in 2024. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Collin Pine is an avid gardener, as well as an educator and writer. His first book is a work of garden-based children’s literature, The Garden Next Door. Thought-provokingly illustrated by Tiffany Everett, the detailed and specific artistry of the book adds a rich visual storyline to the already rich language-based narrative. Just in time for the Winter Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere, The Garden Next Door, at its most philosophical, reminds us of the power of our gardens to support plant and animal life, human community, and pure delight - a delight that transcends age and the many distractions and misdirections of our time. This lovely addition to our children’s bookshelves also reminds us that ALL of our gardens are next door to someone, and in this way, is an addition to our own existential understanding of the power of gardens and gardeners. Happy Happy Solstice from Cultivating Place! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Caribbean-born British-based writer and Gardener Marchelle Farrell is the author of Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside, Finding Home in an English Country Garden. A medical doctor by training, Marchelle’s work unflinchingly surveys her own journey to life in an English country garden and along the way unearths the hard edges but also the richness of the contributions of the African diaspora to our modern gardening world—contributions made willingly and unwillingly, seen, and unseen, acknowledged and unacknowledged. Known as Afroliage online, Marchelle’s writing, a gardening story shared, and home deeply rooted are healing and re-integrating, in that way in which our gardens can be all of our very best health care. Uprooting is both powerfully personal and simultaneously universal. Listen in this week! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In our ongoing exploration of who gardeners are, where gardeners are, and what they are growing in this world, I am thrilled to be joined this week by Maria Rodale, of the Rodale Organic Gardening family. Maria is a self-described "explorer in search of the mysteries of the universe." Author, artist, activist, and recovering CEO, she serves on the board of the Rodale Institute and is also a former board co-chair. Throughout her career, she has advocated for the potential of organic regenerative farming to heal the damage wrought by pesticides and industrial agricultural practices. She is the author of Organic Manifesto and Scratch and is a children’s book author under the pseudonym: Mrs. Peanuckle. Maria is a mother, grandmother, and crazy gardener who lives in Pennsylvania, right near where she was born. This week we take a deep dive into the heart of the lessons of all of our gardens through the lens of Maria’s garden journey, documented in her newest book Love Nature Magic: Shamanic Journey’s Into the Heart of My Garden, out now from Chelsea Green Books. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Jac Semmler is a plant practitioner, a multi-disciplinary, creative, highly skilled horticulturist, and the human behind an epic new book and the Australian-based plant practice known as Super Bloom. As our Northern Hemisphere gardens and landscapes settle into whatever their annual dormancy and winter rest might be, we head to the Southern Hemisphere in conversation with Jac Semmler. Her philosophy (of more flowering plants, everywhere, all the time) behind her work Super Bloom gives us so much to dream about in our coming deep winter sleeps. In this tiny lull between the mostly happy hubbub of the winter holidays, sweet flowery dreams! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In our world at this time, I give thanks for the leadership voices that ground us in innovative ways of thinking and seeing our own power for growing the world better. I thought that this week we could all use a dose of such direction and grounding. With that in mind, please enjoy this BEST OF conversation with Indigenous seed keeper and teacher, Rowen White, and writer and activist Gavin Van Horn. They are voices of reason, relationship, and responsibility in our times. As a gardener and a human in this exact time on our planet, and in this specific season of the year - a season of communal gathering and thankfulness at the tail end of the growing season in the Northern Hemisphere, this week we celebrate Family, Kin, & Kinship. We are joined in this conversational celebration by Gavin Van Horn and Rowen White sharing with us about a new multi-volume collection of written voices entitled "Kinship Belonging in a World of Relations" out now from the Center for Humans and Nature, based in Chicago.  Gavin is the creative and executive director for the Center for Humans and Nature and served as co-editor on the Kinship series with Robin Wall Kimmerer and John Hausdoerffer. Rowen is a seed keeper, a mother, and a farmer from the Mohawk community. She is the educational director and lead mentor of Sierra Seeds an innovative Indigenous seed bank and land-based educational organization located in Nevada city, California. A passionate advocate for Indigenous seed and food sovereignty, Rowen is the founder of the Indigenous Seedkeepers Network and her essay "Sky Woman’s Garden" appears in Partners the third volume of the five-volume Kinship series.  Just like all kinds of gardens, these voices raised together in this uplifting series is all about growing together in this world. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we’re in conversation with award-winning plantsman Riz Reyes of Washington State-based RH Horticulture and Landwave Gardens. Riz is the current Assistant Director of Heronswood Garden and started his new role in May 2022. His duties include overseeing garden staff, volunteers, organizing garden events/plant sales, teaching lectures/workshops, and assists in maintaining and redesigning prominent sections of the gardens. From his early inspirations as a child in the Philippines to his international horticultural studies, to his rich garden career in iconic horticultural landscapes across the Pacific Northwest, to his family-oriented picture book “GROW a Family Guide to Plants and How to Grow Them” (2022) – Riz’s stories and his inherent joy in living with plants will inspire you to grow more, too. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Gwendolyn Wallace is a gardener, a student, a teacher, a historian, and the author of two new works of illustrated children’s literature. Joy Takes Root, and The Light She Feels Inside (both published this year) are works grounded in the human impulse to garden. In words, stories, and images these additions to the world of children’s literature help to grow us all. Using her own history and experience with gardens and gardening, Gwendolyn’s stories remind us (no matter our age) that our gardens raise and tend to us as much as we raise and tend to them! As we lean into the grateful season of November and December - Enjoy. All images courtesy of Gwendolyn Wallace, all rights reserved. It might be just the inspiration we need to get us all planting! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we turn the calendar to November and the season to decidedly late-fall and even wintery in many places across the U.S., we look toward our fall & winter planting windows – especially good for native plants in most of our areas as long as the ground is workable. With that in mind, this week we’re joined by two native plant enthusiasts and nursery people – Kristin Currin and Andrew Merritt of Humble Roots Nursery in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge. Humble Roots is a native plant nursery acclaimed for its efforts in sustainability and promoting native plant passion, knowledge, and ethics across the wider ecoregions of the Pacific Northwest. After years at this work, Kristin and Drew, as he is known, have recently shared a great deal of their knowledge even more widely with the recently published The Pacific Northwest Native Plant Primer, 225 plants for an Earth Friendly Garden, out now from Timber Press. It might be just the inspiration we need to get us all planting! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we continue our artistic autumnal theme in conversation with Nina Veteto, a conservationist, an artist, and an expert storyteller. Known as Blue Ridge Botanic online and creator of the brand new Flora and Forage Podcast (and offshoot of her beloved Secrets of the Wildflowers Video series on social media). Nina is based in North Carolina, and she joins us this week to share more about her history, her artistry, and her passion and voice for plants – from their artistic renderings to their secret stories and other wonders of our natural world. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week in this season of endings and beginnings again, we welcome back writer, backyard tender, and heartfelt observer Margaret Renkl joining us to share more about her newest, likewise heartfelt book: “The Comfort of Crows, A Backyard Year.” Many of you will remember our previous conversation with writer and gardener Margaret Renkl about one of her previous titles, “Late Migrations.” Her opinion pieces in The New York Times document the nature of our humanity weekly. I am so pleased to welcome her back this week to share more about her newest title – what is aptly described as “a literary and nature-based devotional” from one of our favorite backyard nature devotees. Join us, this week. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we return to the artistry and also the activism of our plant-loving and garden-growing lives in conversation with Olly Costello. Through their remarkable colors and forms and interconnections made visible - from the life of the soil to the lives and forms of plants and humans right on up to the myriad stars in our galaxy-night skies - Olly draws us all together. Olly is a white non-binary queer illustrator, food grower, honey bee tender, and a seeker of mysticism. Through their creative work – which includes both visual arts and community building and reimagining - Olly explores themes of interconnectedness, cosmology, reciprocity, queer ecology, biomimicry, and emergence. They are perennially interested in cultivating our radical imaginations to help us all shape our emergent new world – in and out of the garden. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week, we enjoy a conversation with a gardener and garden guru well- known and loved: Joe Lamp’l of the famed and award-winning Growing a Greener World on PBS and The ‘joe gardener’ Show podcast. Growing a Greener World is not just a show name but a nearly life-long mission for Joe. While he is known for his organic vegetable gardening knowledge and advocacy, Joe likewise loves the wilder side of his place in the world and ecological function is a top priority along with his human garden community. And at the end of the day, Joe is a lot like all of us: he just loves playing in the dirt with his plant friends. In our ongoing exploration into who gardeners are, where gardeners are, and what they are growing in this world, Joe Lamp’l joins Cultivating Place to share more about his garden life – and how he enhances ours—the rest of us “joe gardeners.” Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we move toward October, the first a few intermittent episodes reminding us of the artistry behind our plant and garden love, the artistry underpinning mother nature herself. This week we’re in conversation with artist Libby Ellis – photographer who sees the fullness of creation in the many faces of the flowers who delight us. Libby Ellis is a fine art photographer based on the island now known as Martha’s Vineyard homeland of the Wampanoag people and nation who named the beautiful island Noepe. Monochromoatic and often single focused Ellis’ work lands in my heart in a similar way as a Georgia O’Keeffe painting or a Dorothea Lange portrait – all of them capturing the essence of one subject while contributing insight into the workings of life itself – nature, plus the workings of humanity and its perceptions. In the case of Libby Ellis – the focal point include everyday flowers from Cosmos to musk roses, hibiscus to magnolia. And her work has been featured from various locations on Martha’s Vineyard including the Featherstone Center for the Arts and the Carnegie Museum to London’s Saatchi Gallery for the Royal Horticultural Society’s 2022 Botanical Art and Photography exhibit, from the Harvard Divinity School to large scale projection against a high rise building in Denver, CO. Libby joins us from her studio in Edgartown MA (on the to share more about her photographic eye and gardener’s heart.

This week, a Best OF episode revisiting our conversation with Maria Popova, the creator and writer behind The Marginalian (formerly known as Brain Pickings). For the past 16 years, The Marginalia has been a daily—perhaps even hourly—exploration of wonder in our world as seen through the lenses of how we as humans express ourselves in our own creativity, our intellectual curiosity, our sadnesses and griefs, and in our greatest loves and joys.  Gardening and gardeners are recurrently among the human endeavors Maria has explored these many years. This is a light of a conversation in the best spirit of quantum gardening as we tend toward the fullness of Autumn’s splendor. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

On this special edition of the show, our guest will be Cultivating Place’s wonderful host, Jennifer Jewell. Jennifer has a new book out and it’s very special.  A very intimate and, at the same time, global take on the natural and social science aspects of one of the most fundamental things to life on Earth – seeds. Jennifer’s book is titled What We Sow: On The Personal, Ecological and Cultural Significance of Seeds.  It’s an exploration of the lives of plants and people through the cycle of a botanical year viewed through the fundamental lens of seeds. With our guest host, Dave Schlom of NSPR’s Blue Dot program and podcast, we’ll hear about the good and the bad when it comes to the modern world of seeds - from those produced by natural plants battling to adapt to climate change to those produced by human hands. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week, our second episode on gardens and green spaces of New York City, getting us primed for The Garden Conservancy’s inaugural Garden Futures Summit being held at the New York Botanical Garden on Sept. 29th and at gardens across the city on Saturday, Sept. 30th. This week, we head to The High Line – a 1.45 elevated linear garden - one of New York City’s green space highlights. We’re in conversation with Richard Hayden, Director of Horticulture at The High Line since 2022. A horticulture and public garden enthusiast, Richard is all about connecting people with the power of plants. Join us! All photos courtesy of Richard Hayden and The Friends of The High Line, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. The self-seeded wild high line prior to revitalization and curation demonstrates the biodiversity of flora and fauna possible on this elevated railway line. Top image by Joel Sternfeld. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

To kick off September, we head to the Big Apple, where at the end of the month, the Garden Conservancy is holding its inaugural Garden Futures Summit on September 29th and 30th. In preparation, we thought we’d dedicate two episodes to checking in on some garden lives in the city. This week we’re in conversation with photographer, artist, author, and gardener Ngoc Minh Ngo, sharing more about her newest work, “New York Green,” profiling in word and uplifting photography more than 40 exceptional parks and gardens of the five boroughs that comprise New York City. “From tiny corner lots to acres of old-growth forests, New York is filled with a wealth of beautiful green spaces–if you know where to look,” and Ngoc Minh Ngo’s book shows us just where to look. Ngoc was a previous guest on Cultivating Place in 2018, and I am so pleased to welcome her back. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Chad Manley is a fellow and lecturer in the School of Landscape Architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Nora Jacobs and Carlos Velasco were two of the Masters of Landscape Architecture students in Chad’s spring 2023 Landscape Architecture Design Studio entitled Dancing the Dragon’s Jaw – a deeply imagined course of study designed by Chad “inviting students on a smokey dance of space-making along a continuum of Northern and Central California landscapes," and that resulted in an "accretive semester’s long individual-collective physical and digital collage." As a culmination of the students' learning and creative term, they traveled as a group to California to “dance through its communities, meadows, and mountains, meet with fire keepers; land managers; scientists; artists; and designers, situating the journey within both the urgencies and poetic potentials of a land-on-fire.” The studio-developed ‘pyro-loci,’ worked to consider and “re-imagine an empathetic landscape architecture born of regenerative fire" – and regenerative, inclusive, and expansive learning mindsets. They learned from books, from other designers and design history, from the drawing board, but they also learned on and from the land and people for whom their design might be of greatest benefit. In our second week of back-to-school-themed episodes devoted to plant education in school and in life, the three join Cultivating Place this week to share more. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Can you believe it is already back-to-school season? This week, we look at what back to school means for our lifelong learning with plants. This week, we’re in conversation with members of the Miami University of Ohio engaged with Miami’s Institute for Environment and Sustainability Masters of Environment program and Institute for Food Farm to learn more about just a few of the ways plant and horticultural information in integrated into the daily life of Miami’s curriculum. In September of last year, I had the pleasure and privilege of visiting with students, faculty, and horticultural facilities at Miami of Ohio, and it impressed upon me even more urgently the importance of supporting and demanding strong horticultural and ecological curricula in our educational systems at all levels - from pre-school to Pre-med and PhDs of all kinds. This week, Ross Olson, the Coordinator of Miami’s Institute for Food Farm, Colin Valantino, an IES graduate student doing a Summer Client Project “practicum" with the farm, and Aisley Carpenter, a student worker at the farm, are all with Cultivating Place to share more. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we tend toward summer’s end, with end-of-summer and fall events and celebrations perhaps in mind, maybe even winter events in the planning, we turn this week to floristry and how and where it intersects with sustainability – and as our guest today shares, with thoughtfulness. British floral designer Shane Connolly is well-known for his world-class floristry and floral design – gracing several weddings within the British Royal Family as well as the recent coronation of King Charles. While his floral design is known for this high-profile event, Shane is also known as one of the preeminent ambassadors for a more sustainable, organic, local, seasonal, and low-waste floral design and floral supply industry. In advance of the Slow Flowers Society welcoming Shane for three days of workshops and events in Seattle, WA Sept 29th – October 1st, Shane joins Cultivating Place this week to share more. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In the throes of fire season, especially in the western regions of North America, this week, we turn to the idea of not only gardening for beauty, food, and/or habitat but also fire preparedness. We’re speaking this week with Dr. Adrienne Edwards and Rachel Schleiger, biologists, botanists, gardeners, and authors of the new book Firescaping Your Home, a manual for readiness in wildfire country – including 640 resilient native plant recommendations with a focus on native plants of California, Oregon and Washington but widely applicable across wildfire-prone region. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Sam Hoadley is the Manager of Horticultural Research at the Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, a remarkable botanic garden and conservation center as well as one of the country’s leading research and trial gardens for native plant species as well as their old and new cultivars. Open to the public since 2013, Mt. Cuba is dedicated to us all growing at a higher level. With the fall planning and planting season now firmly in sight, Sam joins Cultivating Place this week to share more about the data (including ecological benefits, optimal growing conditions, performance results, and overall beauty) he and the team at Mt. Cuba are aggregating for us as home gardeners about how native plant species and their selections available on the market really DO In our gardens. It’s valuable data for us all. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Erin Presley is the herb, woodland, and pond garden horticulturist at Olbrich Botanical Gardens, a 16-acre, free, public garden founded in 1952 on the shores of Lake Wonona in Madison, Wisconsin. In her position since 2014, Erin has become as much a part of the landscape as the plants and animals of the garden she loves. She has been particularly instrumental in bringing to life, with the help of other plants people, gardens of culture representing the natural history and plant relationships of a diversity of Madisonians from the Indigenous cultures, including Ho-chunk, to Ayurvedic, Hmong, and more. It’s the perfect summer field trip to a wonderful public resource. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

The garden in summer is at its fullest sensory delight and overwhelm – the peak of sunlight, growing hours, heat, and growth, ripening and even rotting. In this week’s conversation, embrace this sublime sensuality from various perspectives in conversation with master naturalist Nancy Lawson. Lawson is perhaps best known as The Humane Gardener, the title of her first book, and her online signature. And a humane gardener she is. She is a habitat consultant, and founder of The Humane Gardener, LLC. She observes, researches, and pioneers creative wildlife-friendly landscaping methods in her own home habitat and for others. In other words – and in all senses of the phrase – Nancy puts her gardening where her words are and words and action come together beautifully in her newest book, Wildscape, Trilling Chipmunks, Beckoning Blooms, Salty Butterflies, and Other Sensory Wonders of Nature. Together this week, we delve into her newest research and reporting on the complexity and richness of the sensory life of other than human lives, from the botanical to the birds, bugs, mammals, amphibians, and other wildlife all around us. Wildscape is the eye, ear, nose and heart opening! Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

The garden in summer is what we all dream of: some downtime, some play time, fresh flavors, fragrances, and of course, flowers and fun. This week we revel in the beautiful chaos of a garden-inspired life with an Oklahoma accent in the company of Linda Vater, author of The Beautiful & Edible Garden, and founder of Potager Blog on Instagram and Garden Inspired Living on Youtube. Linda is exuberantly-spirited and as well-known for her former storybook Oklahoma Garden – its expansive front garden and deliciously designed back garden potager - as she is for her extensive and supremely elegant collection of homegrown topiary. Now in residence in her new-old Cottage on the Hill garden, Linda is fashion-minded, fabulous, and fun in the second of our gardener’s summer vacation-themed conversations. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Novelist Jane Delury describes herself as a fledgling (maybe seedling?) gardener after 8 years into gardening being part of her everyday life and loves. This labor and love in life coincide with themes of landscapes, gardens, and gardeners becoming fully-embodied motifs and characters in her fiction writing. They show up in her first novel-in-stories, The Balcony, and in her newly released novel Hedge, gardens, gardeners, and gardening past and present from all kinds of perspectives take center stage.  Deep into the heat of the season now, it’s always gratifying to lean into the pleasures of a good summer book. In our case, a good garden-based summer book. Hedge is steamy, dreamy, and through the setting of gardens and garden history, the story plumbs the depths of human longing, loss, and ultimately the long view.  Jane joins Cultivating Place this first week of July to share more about her new and richly gardened novel, the research that went into it, and the garden passion and history that enlivens it. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week before July is upon us, and thoughts of what it means to be a citizen fill our minds, hearts, and collective messaging, I am so pleased to be joined by Taylor Pennewell and Rose Hammock of the Redbud Resource Group, an advocacy organization founded in 2020 by Taylor and her cousin Madison Esposito. The Redbud Resource Group believes fiercely that intergenerational healing can occur only when Native voices are valued in every area of public life. Taylor and Madison's “firsthand experience as modern Native people inspired" them to "create resources that support all communities" in making an often erased population visible again. “Native people are often left out of conversations on issues that impact their communities,” the Group notes, and in their work, they see the impact of this erasure regularly. As an intervention and disruption of this pattern, the Redbud Resource Group is improving public health outcomes for Native American communities through education, research, and community partnership. It is generative, growing, and much-needed work in our world going meaningfully beyond land acknowledgments and building bridges between Native and non-native communities. As Taylor and Rose make clear early in our conversation, you cannot separate the fate of any damage done to Native peoples from that done to native lands and plant communities; their healing and success go hand in hand as well. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In our ongoing exploration of who gardeners are, where gardeners are, and how they are growing our world, I am so pleased to be back in conversation this week with Day Schildkret, the founder, the ongoing creator, and re-creator of the movement and practice known as Morning Altars, bringing together nature, art, and ritual.  Day and his work are devoted to the pursuit of impermanent beauty and how that can become nourishment for life to continue. That sounds like being a gardener to me, and the week of the Summer Solstice is the perfect time to reflect on this. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

National Pollinator Week is an annual celebration since 2010 in support of pollinator health that was initiated and is managed by Pollinator Partnership. This year National Pollinator Week festivities will take place across the country June 19 – 25, 2023 and in celebration, this week on Cultivating Place we look closely at one particular group of our native pollinators the charismatic bumble bees, the more than 250 species in the genus Bombus. Our guest this week, Leif Richardson, is an Endangered Species Conservation Biologist with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, coordinating the community science efforts behind the newest of the society’s North American Bumble Bee Atlases - this time in California. If you’re in the Northern California listening region, mark your calendars for the mid-July opening of an in-depth and beautiful exhibit entitled Bombus: The Natural History of Bumble Bees. At Gateway Science Museum on the campus of California State University, Chico, this new exhibition interweaves current scientific research on the North American population of bumble bees, as well as over a decade of study, observations and spectacular photography by plantsman and California Bumble Bee Atlas participant John Whittlesey. Through his deeply studied lens, you will never see a bumble bee again without a deepened love and appreciation. Listen in this week and join us in person this summer! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

No matter what you might call it – Rewilding, wildscaping, backyard habitats, Acts of Restorative Kindness, Native plant habitat gardening, Homegrown National Park, Perfect Earth, 2/3rds for the Birds, or Garden for Wildlife, the concepts of Conservation + Biodiversity + our Gardens wherever they might be is not a new idea, although it is newly imperative in our world. These three concepts as a perfect trinity go back to at very least 1973 when the National Wildlife Federation kicked off its Garden for Wildlife Program. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of these programs, Cultivating Place is joined this week by Mary Phillips, since 2014 she has been the head of the NFW’s garden for wildlife and certified wildlife habitat programs. In this big anniversary year, the programs are very close to realizing 300,000 cultivated wildlife habitats and gardens. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Welcome June! This week, the third and final-for-now conversation in our series on the state of seed for native ecosystem restoration through the lens of California: seed identified, site-sourced, and grown for conservation & biodiversity support. The foundational level of seed – for scales large and small, and how it grows on from there is top of mind at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Southern California, an historic conservation icon in their region through their seed banking and native plant conservation, education, and community-based work. This week I am joined by Executive Director Evan Meyer, Seed & Bulb Program Manager Genevieve Arnold, and Horticulturist and California Native Plant Landscaper Certification instructor Alejandro Lemus to explore and celebrate more about the radical range of the Theodore Payne Foundation as it grows us into the future and normalizes the great fun of native plant landscapes. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Pat Reynolds is a restoration ecologist with more than 30 years of professional experience in the design, implementation, and monitoring of habitat restoration projects, including the effective use of native seed. He is the Director of River Partners’ Native Seed and Plant program, the former General Manager of Hedgerow Farms, and a past Associate Restoration Ecologist at H.T. Harvey & Associates. This week we continue our series exploring conservation and biodiversity support at the foundational level of seed—for scales large and small—in conversation with Pat. Heritage Grower’s high-quality habitat seed sourcing, grow out, and distribution to restoration projects, often in collaboration with their sibling endeavor, River Partners, is a model in getting high-quality source-identified seed for the right places in the face of increasing urgency for restoration, but also increasing hope as to the impact of restoration. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we kick off a several-part series looking into the state of seed, specifically wildland seed, for conservation and ecological restoration in our world from various perspectives. We start off in conversation with Andrea Williams, the Director of Biodiversity Initiatives with the California Native Plant Society, and from there, a contributor to both the proposed California Seed Strategy and the National Seed Strategy. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

We are now mid-May, halfway through a month of graduations, spring celebrations, and weddings, and Mother’s Day is upon us here in the US this coming weekend. Something that all of these celebratory kinds of human-marked rituals and events have in common? We so often mark them with the best of our most loved flowers of the season. With that as our touchstone, I am so pleased to once again be in conversation this week with Deb Prinzing, founder of the Slow Flowers movement here in the U.S. and Canada, and of The Slow Flowers Society, representing the needs, successes, stories, and voices of the floral world in the Slow Flowers Journal, in the weekly Slow Flowers Podcast, and in the annual gathering known as the Slow Flowers Summit, this year happening in Seattle, WA June 26th and 27th. As yet another facet of her floral-focused advocacy, Deb is co-founder and Editorial Director of Bloom Imprint Books, which identifies, develops, and publishes projects that shine a light on the floral lifestyle, showcasing the stories of floral personalities, creatives, entrepreneurs, farmers, artisans, and makers. Their newest title, “Furrow and Flour,” by sisters Sarah Kuenzi and Beth Syphers, fits right in with this week’s themes. I don’t know how she does it all, but I am so pleased she’s back to share with us about it. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we head into the exuberance of May and towards Mother’s Day celebrations here in the U.S., this week, we speak again with award-winning poet, scholar, and University Distinguished Professor at CSU, Colorado: Camille Dungy.  Her newest book, Soil: The Story of A Black Mother’s Garden, just published on Tuesday, May 2nd, from Simon & Schuster. SOIL is a rich exploration into and celebration of ancestry and being an ancestor; about what it means to be human, about motherhood, writing, gardening, biodiversity, grief, beauty, joy, and above all, SOIL is about the tenacious hope for growth. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we close out April, a best of conversation from Mother’s Day 2022. Can we ever get enough nurturing energy in the world? Enjoy! David Rawle is the founder and force (with contribution and support from his wife, Carol Perkins, and a wide variety of community members in Charleston, SC), behind Theodora Park, a public park in Charleston - designed and cared for (with financial and care planning for the long haul) in a way that is reminiscent of the very best of private gardens: it is open, it is both lively and tranquil, it is filled with beautiful seasonal (native and non-native) plants, it offers places to sit, to play, to splash as well as to gather; it offers artful views representative of and inviting for the entire community - residents and visitors alike - human and more-than-human alike. Theodora Park was opened in 2015 and is dedicated to the memory ofDavid’s mother - Theodora. Happy Mother’s Day to all mothering souls and spaces - may all of our gardens, public and private, be welcoming, nurturing – shall we say mothering - places for all. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This last week of April, we enjoy an art of the garden conversation with artist, historian, gardener and environmental advocate Rebecca Allan. Bronx-New York-based, Rebecca is “known for her richly layered and chromatically nuanced abstract paintings. Her work investigates watershed environments and landscapes and is inspired by her deep interest in botany and land conservation. In 2018 Rebecca established Painterly Gardens, a firm specializing in sustainable garden design. From January through June of 2023, Rebecca’s solo show, Cultivating Eden is featured at Wave Hill House & Garden. The exhibit presents Rebecca’s recent paintings focused on the labor of gardeners and their spaces. By artistically highlighting working process—both visible and unnoticed—her series praises the devoted care that the gardeners provide on a daily basis. She sees Wave Hill as “a special place where art and horticulture are intertwined. Both practices require tenacity, refined skill and historical curiosity.” As an artist and gardener Rebecca notes that one motivation behind her work is “a desire to nurture the world by envisioning and then enacting spaces where beauty is revealed.”

It is now Mid-April, and this week we are celebrating both California Native Plant Week AND the week of Earth Day. Wildflowers are blooming and being admired across the country! In honor of Earth Day 2023 and all of the fierce and tender hopes we have for it, we are back in conversation with Ireland’s Mary Reynolds, self-described as an ex-garden designer, actively reimagining and rebuilding a relationship with nature through her most recent founding of a movement known as We Are the Ark in which we transform our gardens and gardening into Acts of restorative Kindness welcoming and supporting all manner of life. Some of you may remember that my previous conversation with Mary in 2019 after her last book, The Garden Awakening, was published, and just as she was founding We Are the Ark. Mary’s dedication and persistence around the importance of each of us in stewarding the land we can is a bright spot in our world. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Great gardens need great plants, and great plants people the world over, throughout history, have made it their lives calling to bring gardeners great plants – whether introducing native plants to the horticultural trade, selecting best garden varieties from naturally occurring choices by breeding, and by educating both the trade and gardeners in their gardens on best cultivation of these same plants. This week's guest on Cultivating Place is one such well-known and long-respected plantsperson who has helped to shift our horticultural world for the better these past many decades – Roy Diblik. Roy who began selecting and propagating native plants for ecologically and beautiful gardens beginning in the 1970s, and as a gardener, nurseryman, writer, and thinker, he went on to co-found Northwind Perennials Farm, a nursery and garden design business based in Burlington, Wisconsin, serving public and private gardens and gardeners. Roy is an expert at creating compelling and ecologically-contributing combinations of native and nonnative plants using methods he variously describes as the watercolor style of planting, and “know maintenance” designs. It is a pleasure to welcome this national treasure of a plantsman to the program. Roy’s knowledge and passion has something to offer every garden and every gardener. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

I know the adage goes that April showers bring May flowers, but based on images from across the Northern Hemisphere – from snowdrops in Vermont, Cherry Blossoms in DC, wildflowers in California, and daffodils peeking out in parts of Colorado between snow storms – April has plenty of her own bloom and the growing season is underway. To inspire your planting and designs for the season ahead, this week we’re back in conversation with Benjamin Vogt of Monarch Gardens, a fierce advocate on behalf of our gardens being critically important links in our world’s broken and fragmented ecological chains. You may remember my 2018 conversation with Benjamin about his first book – A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future?  Well that ethical manifesto now has an instruction manual in Benjamin’s second book - Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design – it might be just the reference you need to get your growing season off to a great start. Join us this week for more with Benjamin Vogt! All images courtesy of Benjamin Vogt, Monarch Gardens, LLC., all rights reserved. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Alice Vincent is a multi-platform storyteller based in London, and examining with gusto and curiosity the intricacies of words and language, of what it is to be human, to be a woman, and to be always in service to the wonders – large and small, grief-laden and joy-spangled - of everyday life. The author of several previous books, including her nature memoir - Rootbound, Rewilding a Life, Alice goes by the name Noughticulture online. For our final episode in this year's five-part series of Cultivating Place in honor of Women’s History Month, I caught up with Alice just a few short weeks ago to talk in-depth about her newest work: Why Women Grow, Stories of Soil, Sisterhood, and Survival. It is a moving, indeed verdant, tapestry of Alice’s own story as a woman "going to ground" to grow herself, intertwined with that stories of other women gardening across Great Britain and beyond and what that has meant to their own lives and to our collective understanding of both gardens and women. Since we spoke, Alice has added one more title to her life list: mother. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

For this penultimate episode of Women’s History month, Cultivating Place heads to Tacoma, Washington, to chat with Tyra Shenaurlt, horticulture resource supervisor at Metro Parks Tacoma, overseeing, among other things, a hundred fifteen-year-old glass house known as the W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory in Tacoma’s wright park. From March 2021 to May of 2022, the historic structure underwent a massive restoration. Now almost one year out from re-opening, Tyra is with us to share more about her own story as a black woman in horticulture and the story of the historic conservatory where she has made the most of her career and leadership. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we revisit a best-of Cultivating Place conversation focusing on seeding our imaginations—metaphorically and literally, with Diane Wilson writer, gardener, emeritus executive director of Dream of Wild Health and, more recently, emeritus executive director of The Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance. Diane has long interwoven her gardening and her advocacy work with her writing, and her first novel, The Seed Keeper, was published by Milkweed press in 2021. Join us for more about Diane’s journey of discovering, sharing, and celebrating seeds and Indigenous cultural recovery through the knowledge and history that seeds hold and the future they make possible. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In a continuation of Women’s History Month and our ongoing exploration of who gardeners are, where gardeners are, and what they are growing in this world, especially as it relates to improving the impact of our gardening lives on the larger planet, I am so pleased to be in conversation this week with Kathy Kramer. Kathy is a long-time advocate for native plant and ecological gardening based on the natives of your area, and she has been determined for many, many years to demonstrate just how beautiful that concept of gardening can be. She is the founder of The Bringing back the Natives Garden Tour, based in the Bay Area of Northern California, but which after 19 years in operation, has country-wide acclaim. The tour and the gardening-ethos it cultivates and celebrates can be replicated anywhere we as humans garden. As Spring draws closer - Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In this first week of March, we kick off Women’s History Month in conversation with one of the great critical thinkers and writers of our time, Rebecca Solnit. Writer, historian, feminist, and activist, Rebecca’s long bibliography epitomizes her wide-ranging humanitarian interests—from politics to cultural geography to environmentalism and an abiding love of the earth herself. In her hands, all of these topics are revelations on our culture’s many fault lines and the human actions and responses—from walking, to reading, to traveling or gardening with open minds, eyes, and hearts—that might bridge these fault lines. Rebecca’s many books include Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, The Far Away Nearby, Men Explain Things to Me, and Orwell’s Roses, “a lush exploration of politics, roses, and pleasure, and a fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener whose political writing was grounded [and sometimes refueled] by his passion for the natural world.” While many of Rebecca’s titles fall firmly under the purview of the concerns of Cultivating Place, it was her 2021 title, Orwell’s Roses, the was the catalyst for my inviting her to be a guest on the program – that and a generous nudge from Maria Popova. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This last week of February, we return to our love of apples – and the warm comfort of eating and cooking with homegrown ones, a particular joy in late February when spring and summer seem close but also still too far away. We’re in conversation with the UK’s James Rich, orchardist, chef, and author of Apple: Recipes from the Orchard and his latest Orchard: Sweet and Savoury Recipes from the Countryside, out now from Hardie Grant Books. I caught up with James in late November, and I knew this would be a warming conversation for this end-of-February time of year. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Now more than halfway from the winter solstice to the spring equinox, many of us have seeds of spring and summer foods on our minds (and hearts). So, this week we continue our celebration of Black History Month, and love stories, centered on the cooperative, and communal concept of Ujaama, in conversation with Bonnetta Adeeb of Ujaama Seeds, and the Ujaama Cooperative Farming Alliance, and Nathan Kleinman of the Experimental Farm network, a member and collaborator in the Ujaam alliance and all that it is growing – which is both uplifting and delicious. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Love is already a theme in the work of Cultivating Place, to be sure, but with last week’s loving work around the restoration of historic apple orchards in southwestern Colorado, and this week’s episode, which I think of as the Love Letters of Abra Lee, love letters, love stories, and loving gardeners is an explicit theme here this month!  In celebration of Black History Month in progress and Valentine’s Day coming up – this week we’re rejoined in conversation by Abra Lee, gardener, garden scholar under the name of Conquer the Soil, horticulturist, and graduate of the Longwood Gardens Fellows program, a 13-month leadership in public horticulture fellowship. In addition to co-creating a public garden exhibition called Music x Flowers, Abra has recently accepted a position as Director of Horticulture at the Oakland Cemetery, a historic Victorian garden cemetery in downtown Atlanta. This week’s conversation is a valentine to gardeners and garden lovers everywhere. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As February is upon us we turn from a love letter to biodiversity writ large to a labor of love in conserving the biodiversity of one iconic fruit in large part born of human labor across the ages and the globe – apples. We’re in conversation with Jude Schuenemeyer, who with his wife Addie, has spent decades discovering, researching, documenting, protecting, restoring, and propagating the rich diversity of heritage apple varieties in Colorado’s southwestern-most Montezuma county.  The diversity of apple genetics in this region traces back 150 years or more, and in this traditional winter season of apple tree pruning, and apple scion wood selection, and the first of grafting season, Jude shares with us more about how The Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project ( affectionately referred to as MORP) is preserving historic trees and orchards and simultaneously cultivating food, economic, and environmental vigor in their region, which makes a wonderful model for all of our regions. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we complete our 4-part conservation series kicking off 2023 by taking a broader look at the Klamath River’s namesake region and the importance of knowing any place better from multiple perspectives for the most effective and durable conservation to be truly possible.  We’re in conversation with Michael Kauffman, research plant ecologist, educator, and founder with his botanist wife Allison of the ecologically focused Backcountry Press, and Justin Garwood, Environmental Scientist for the California Dept. of Fish and wildlife with a focus on fisheries. Michael and Justin have spent the better part of the last decade curating and editing a cohort of 34 expert contributors to a new and really the first comprehensive Natural History of the Klamath Mountains, one of the most biodiverse temperate mountain ranges on earth. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Seen in the overview, the 30 x 30 conservation efforts at federal and state levels are tremendous, but as the last two weeks’ conversations have made clear, it is at the landscape and local levels that these conservation efforts work or don’t work, get done or don’t, and ideally get done as thoroughly and thoughtfully as possible. This week we focus on one specific and historical project at least 50 years in the making – the undamming of the majestic Klamath River. The final approval for the removal of a series of hydroelectric-production dams (whose installations date from the early to the mid1900s) was won in November of 2022. Dam removal is set to begin in 2023. We’re in conversation with two people, Brook Thompson and Joshua Chenoweth, engaged in preparing for the revegetation of the more than 2000 acres that will be re-exposed following the draining of the dam basins. Brook is a Yurok tribal member, a Native scholar, a civil engineer, water rights and cultural sovereignty activist, and Joshua is a restoration ecologist working for the Yurok tribe and leading the many-year planning and implementation of this complex revegetation process. It’s all about re-connections. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we continue our multi-part series on the many facets of the global 30 x 30 conservation efforts as they continue across the state of California as just one example of local, state, and national efforts aggregated. We're in conversation with Jun Bando, the new executive director of the California Native Plant Society, and back in conversation with Liv O’Keefe, the senior director of Public Affairs for the Society. CNPS is an important agency in a larger coalition of agencies and groups contributing to California’s planning, assessment, and projects meeting the goals of 30 x 30 in this one large biodiverse state. A good portion of this broader coalition took part in CNPS’s 2022 conservation conference, entitled Rooting together: restoring connections to plants, place, and people, at which one whole learning track was dedicated to conservation via the 30 x 30 framework and funding as we look ahead.  Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Welcome, 2023! This week Cultivating Place kicks off a multi-part series devoted to the international, national, state, and local conservation efforts collectively known as 30 x 30 – a multi-faceted commitment by governments, agencies, and localities to securely preserve 30% of our world’s biodiversity by 2030. While President Joe Biden committed to the goals of the 30 x 30 conservation concept within a week of taking office in January 2021, the state of California had already committed to the vision in late 2020 with Governor Gavin Newsom’s signing of the Executive Order N-82-20 outlining and financially supporting the State of California to preserving 30% of its land and water biodiversity, as overseen by California’s Secretary of Natural Resources since 2019, Wade Crowfoot. The first in our series of conversations with people engaged in envisioning and engineering the 30 x 30 conservation projects coming from federal, state, and local levels - and we hope into our very backyards - is with Jennifer Norris, the Deputy Secretary for Biodiversity and Habitat at the California Natural Resources Agency. Norris leads the state's 30x30 initiative being carried out by many agencies and organizations and she oversees "Cutting Green Tape" in support of landscape-scale habitat restoration. Hope you’ll join us for this informative and inspiring series! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we look out over a new garden year this week, a conversation to help us meet our garden learning goals. Award-winning designers, writers, educators, and consummate plant-driven gardeners Annie Guillefoyle and Noel Kingsbury join us to share more about their year-round and globally accessible Garden Masterclass forum. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Cris Sarabia is the conservation director of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy. He is also a dedicated and active member of many local land and conservation organizations in his home region of North Long Beach, in Southern California, including GreyWater Action Network, the California Native Plant Society, Pelecanus, and Puente Latino, a grassroots non-profit art, culture, and ecology organization serving the North Long beach community since 2019. At this time of year, post-Solstice, in the midst of Hanukkah, pre-Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the New Year – I think many of us try to center ideals of clarity, connection, caring, and community. This week we have a conversation with a human whose work caring for lives out these very ideals within his many land, water, plant, and human communities. This to me, is what truly good gardening is all about in so many ways. Many listeners will remember an earlier conversation I had with Cris on Cultivating Place in April of 2021 when Cris was the Board Chair of the California Native Plant Society and their decolonizing work. I am so pleased to be chatting more fully with Cris this week about all that he cultivates in his community-based life. Listen in - and Happy Holidays! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week, a pre-Solstice offering for Cultivating Place listeners! Maria Popova is the creator and writer behind The Marginalian (formerly known as Brain Pickings), which, for the past 16 years, has been a daily—perhaps even hourly—exploration of wonder in our world as seen through the lenses of how we as humans express ourselves in our own creativity, our intellectual curiosity, our sadnesses and griefs, and in our greatest loves and joys. Gardening and gardeners are recurrently among the human endeavors Maria has explored these many years. This is a light of a conversation in the best spirit of quantum gardening as we near our longest night and just before we begin tending back toward the light once again. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week – we visit and learn from gardeners' past as we look to the future in conversation with Judith Tankard, a landscape historian, author, and preservation consultant. Tankard is the author or co-author of twelve illustrated books on landscape history, including her most recent publications, Beatrix Farrand: Garden Artist, Landscape Architect (Monacelli Press, 2022); Gardens of the Arts and Crafts Movement; and Ellen Shipman and the American Garden, winner of the 2019 J. B. Jackson Book Prize. Across her long career, Tankard has traced and made visible the lives, struggles, and achievements of some of the most notable female garden designers and landscape architects of the early 20th century. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Kier Holmes is a garden designer and writer regularly contributing to the likes of Martha Stewart, Better Homes and Gardens, Gardenista, Sonoma Magazine, Marin Magazine, and Sunset Magazine. She is also a children’s garden and science educator. In her writing and designing, she focuses on low-cost and low-impact, chemical-free, richly textured, visually dynamic spaces full of life – all of which is well documented in her newest book: The Garden Refresh How to Give your Yard Big Impact on a Small Budget. Kier joins cultivating place this week to kick off December! Listen in. 114_Kier_EM.jpg All images courtesy of Kier Holmes, all rights reserved. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Dear All, Rebecca Schiller is a gardener, a smallholding steward, an activist, and author of: A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention, A Memoir of Coming Home to My Neurodivergent Mind – about grounding back to land, place, and garden - even after a surprising diagnosis of severe ADHD. Schiller’s writing and her gardening-life vividly reminds us all that being different doesn’t have to mean broken – in our minds, our hearts, or our gardens. This narrative and this discussion remind us that it is the many ways in which we pay attention in this world that shows what and whom we value and everyone and everything for which we are thankful. And it is so very often our gardens that remind us not only of where we are but who we are. Listen in this week! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In this week after Veterans Day here in the U.S, and in this season clarifying that gratitude is one of the greatest gifts of the garden and the growing world, we’re in conversation with someone who knows this gift of the garden perhaps especially well. Zepherine - Zee – Hanson is an Air Force Veteran who, after 8 years serving as a military photojournalist, took a medical retirement in 2004. As part of her own healing journey, Zephrine joined the Veterans to Farmers program in Denver, CO. Working in partnership with the Denver Botanic Gardens, the therapeutic Veterans to Farmers program was life-changing for Zephrine, bringing together all of the things she cared most about and motivating her to found her business Hamden Farms, which connects farming, storytelling, small business incubation, underserved communities, and growing outside the box. For her innovative work researching how to connect unused farm produce to small makers looking to craft value add products- helping to stabilize the incomes of both farmers and makers, Zephrine has won awards and recognition from the Bob Evan Heroes to CEOs program, from LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program, from REI, and more. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In one of our more flamboyant arboreal seasons of the year—when our charismatic woody megaflora of the Northern Hemisphere—the trees—are chorophylling down, coloring up, and turning over their foliage biomass to the soil in preparation for the winter ahead, this week we are in a conversational exploration about the scale and meaning of trees, with William (Ned) Friedman, 8th director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Located in Jamaica Plain and Roslindale Masschuesetts, this free and open-to-the public majestic convening of trees is celebrating its 150th anniversary of growing together. The trees have so much to teach us, and we have so much to learn. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Settling into November now, this week on Cultivating Place we’re in conversation with three members of the horticultural team at Filoli, a historic house and 16 acres cultivated garden in Woodside, California, where they are striving toward environmental and cultural practices to generously pay their long history of privilege forward. Just in time for the generous season in front of us. At Filoli, gardeners are striving to meet the social and environmental moment in the best ways possible—ever adapting and evolving to experiment, include, reinterpret, and contribute more and more positively. They think not only about what to plant when but about why these spaces matter and what they have to teach us.  Jim Salyards is the Director of the garden at Filoli, Kate Nowell is the production gardens manager, and Haley O’Connor is Filoli’s formal gardens manager. They are all with us this week to speak and share more on just these topics. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Approaching All Hallow’s Eve/Halloween, Samhain, and Day of the Dead, we are entering into the season of gratitude - running from now through the Winter Solstice & the calendar’s new year. It is a season of gathering, collection, and reflection, and Cultivating Place is in conversation this week with an artist and a green spirit in our garden care world, Louesa Roebuck, about her newest book Punk Ikebana: Reimagining the Art of Floral Design (gathering, gleaning & composing in situ), being published by Cameron + Company Books on November 8. Louesa is a multimedia and multigenre creative, floral artist, printmaker, painter, textile designer, curator, and author. You may recall our conversation several years ago around her first book: Foraged Flora. In Punk Ikebana, Louesa starts from a place of reverence for tradtion, in particular those of Japan, but also from a place of "peace-punk, Do-No-Harm." Ikebana, “the way of the flowers,” has been studied formally in Japan and beyond for centuries. In Punk Ikebana, Louesa explains and riffs on the art form’s classic rules—and then demonstrates how to seasonally, sensually, and meaningfully bend them. The book highlights stunning arrangements and installations that unite the cultural meanings and wise elegance of a traditional perspective with an inviting freedom from convention for anyone to feel welcome into.

This week on Cultivating Place, we continue with fall/winter planning and planting, this time with a focus on design, in conversation with Nick and Allison McCullough – of McCullough landscape & Nursery, a design, build, and maintenance firm based in New Albany, Ohio. Their new book American Roots, Lesson and Inspiration from the Designers Reimagining our Home Gardens, is a transcontinental tour of diverse modern home garden design offering lessons and inspiration- seasoned with playfulness, passion, and purpose. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

As another offering to all of you in this Autumnal planting and planning period, a revisit and reminder of the poetics involved as well as the pragmatics, in conversation with award-winning poet and long-time home gardener Camille Dungy. Camille is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award, and the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Camille is also a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. In our conversation, we explore the intertwining of poetry, gardening, life, and trophic cascades in each of them. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we look to our fall and winter planting and planning windows, this week, Cultivating Place is back in conversation with Uli Lorimer, native plantsman and Director of Horticulture at the Native Plant Trust. His new book, "The Northeast Native Plant Primer: 235 Plants for an Earth Friendly Garden," is a great resource no matter where you garden. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This first full week of Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere – looking toward the month of October and its many harvest celebrations, we look to our seeds – the beginning and end of the lives of the seed-bearing plants who make our lives possible.  Stacey Denton, of Flora Farm & Design Studio in Williams, Oregon, is an organic flower farmer, bioregional seed grower, and homesteader based in the Klamath Siskiyou region of Southern Oregon. Trained in ecology, permaculture, organic farming, and seed growing and saving, Stacey makes her community-and-land-based life with her daughter Hannah and with her parents nearby. Stacey and I connected over the importance of bioregional seed growing, sourcing, knowing, and supporting at the Slow Flowers Summit held at Filoli in the summer of 202, and she joins cultivating Place this week to share more about the literacy - and joy - of specifically bioregional seeds.  Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we look at culture and ecology with Farmer Rishi. Rishi is a farmer/gardener, teacher, thinker, and lover of life-based in Southern California. The executive director of the Sarvodaya Institute there, Rishi leads by example and by invitation. His intention for working in the fields of regeneration and urban farming is to joyfully increase understanding around the basic principles behind the healing of our bodies: both our physical bodies and our shared Earthen body. From his experiences farming in suburban Southern California as well as at Vandana Shiva’s Navdanya Farm in India, Rishi believes that our individual footprints can and should leave the world with rich soil, running rivers, and smiling faces. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Anna Andreyeva is a Russian-born UK- based garden designer, plantswoman, and mother. She is currently pursuing a horticultural and ecological research Ph.D. focused on perennial steppe plants around the world for green roofs and general urban planting in a changing world under British plantsman Nigel Dunnett in Sheffield, England. Anna designed the plantings for many public spaces, including the so-called Highline of Moscow prior to moving to the UK four years ago. In 2022, she collaborated on the planting plans for the “What Does Not Burn” garden, symbolizing the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and reflecting the country’s culture and tradition at the Hampton Court flower show. Sponsored by the GLAU (Guild of Landscape Architects of Ukraine) and Studio Toop, the garden won an award for Global Impact. Anna joins us this week to share more about gardens and plants as common grounds and art forms to help meet the challenges ahead. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

If you ask me, the independent nurseries and growers of our world – especially those focused on helping us as gardeners create not only beautiful gardens but also gardens that contribute to the ecologies of our places, are some of our great national treasures. This week following Labor Day, we celebrate these treasures wherever they may be in conversation with one: Barton Springs Nursery in Austin, TX, where since 1986 the owners and staff having been raising both plants and gardeners right. In 2021, Barton Springs Nursery succeeded from the founders Conrad and Bernadine Bering into the skillful and passionate hands of garden designer Amy Hovis, and horticulturist William Glenn and photographer and systems designer Greg Thomas. The three, plus their dedicated and knowledgeable staff continue the long and beautiful Barton Springs Nursery legacy of offering in-house, seed-grown, native and climate adapted plants (without the use of toxic chemicals), inspiring display gardens, and garden education ensuring low-impact, high contribution - and even higher joy - gardening for Austin – and the planet. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

Pam Penick is the gardener behind the well-known long-time garden blog known as Diggi ng. Based in Austin, Texas, Pam is an avid and audacious gardener and garden writer. She is also a determined garden community builder in all that she does from digging, to writing, to organizing gatherings like the Garden Bloggers Fling, a convening of garden communicators in a different city or gardening region of the US each year. In 2017, she dug in deeper and began organizing and hosting a garden design speaker series called Garden Spark, to facilitate bringing some of the best voices in gardening for the benefit and expansion of her garden region. Pam joins Cultivating Place this week to share more about life in a hot & dry climate as a thinking gardener. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Still in the Dog Days of Summer - the heat it hot, the days are long, and garden maintenance in the form of watering, weeding, and perhaps mowing and blowing (especially in the dry and droughty parts of the country right now) might be wearing thin….especially with the relentless watering/mowing/blowing of a thirsty lawn. Maybe you’re rethinking your lawn? Wanting to water/mow less and see butterflies, hummingbirds, and fireflies more? With just this in mind, this week on CP, we revisit a Best of Conversation with Owen Wormser inspiring us to transform our lawns (or some portion of them) into meadows! Enjoy - At a time when our gardens large and small often feel more important than ever, I think our focus on exactly what our gardens contain and consist of is also more important than ever.   I’m pleased to be speaking about just this with Owen Wormser. Based in Western Massachusetts, Owen is the founder of Abound Design, providing design & consulting for regenerative, sustainability-focused landscapes. He is also the co-founder with traditional and clinical herbalist Chris Marano, of the non-profit Local Harmony, focused on encouraging and creating community driven regeneration. Finally, Owen is the author of a new book entitled "Lawns into Meadows, Growing a Regenerative Landscape", out now from Stone Pier Press.  Owen joins us to share more on his deep belief in the planet’s tendency towards abundance. Listen in. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In our ongoing exploration of where gardeners are and what they are doing in our world right now, we head pretty far north on Cultivating Place this week in conversation with Canadian gardener Janet Melrose.  Janet is known in Calgary, Alberta as the Cottage Gardener, she is also an urban farming spokesperson and leader, a horticultural therapist, and co-author with fellow gardener Sheryl Normandeau of a series known as the Prairie Gardener’s Go-To guides - the first of those guides was published in March 2020 by Touchwood Editions and two additional guides have been released every year since. The series is up-to-date Q & As for gardening in Janet’s specific northern prairie place on everything from vegetables to soil, seeds to garden pest management, trees, and shrubs to perennials, but Janet is deeply embedded in her garden community in a wide variety of ways. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we’re in conversation with Jenny Jones and Jen Toy. They are gardeners, landscape architects, and caring humans who are taking the idea of a test plot to the community level. A test plot is a traditional term used in botany and land reclamation work. It describes a smaller piece of land on which outcomes are observed and tested in order to apply an appropriate treatment or formulate a realistic expectation for larger piece of land – whether for reclamation needs, the land’s seed bank, for soil health, or the like. But Jenny and Jen’s idea, that they call Test Plot is to create an ongoing, hands-on experiment in ecological restoration that engages the community. Initially a more casual project of the Terremoto LA design firm, Jenny and Jen’s purpose for Test Plot is to celebrate the labor involved in land care and to build a stronger land and community-based land stewardship ethic, starting from their own community of Los Angeles. Soon enough, they hope to be growing somewhere close to you! Listen in. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

David Godshall is a landscape architect, gardener, and meta-garden philosopher making his way with his young family and his Terremoto Landscape Architecture design studio team in Los Angeles. The Terremoto team was featured as one of Elle Décor’s A List of designers in 2021. David’s LA home garden and his perspective on adventurous gardening and design are featured in Under Western Skies, on which I collaborated with photographer Caitlin Atkinson. This week we revisit David’s conversation with Cultivating Place last year, and as he shares in our conversation: "Garden building is civilization building,” it should be done with creativity and integrity at all levels. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

It’s the height of warm season crops in our gardens here in the Northern Hemisphere, and this week Cultivating Place is joined by Jeff Quattrone – graphic artist, gardener, and heirloom vegetable and seed advocate based in Salem County, New Jersey. Jeff is particularly dedicated to the preservation and sharing forward of the histories and genetics of historic, culturally, and economically important Jersey Tomatoes – born and bred right there in his region for more than a century. In 2014 Jeff founded the Library Seed Bank, which grew into a Southern New Jersey seed library network. Having work with Seed Savers Exchange and served as a Slow Food Ark of Taste’s regional representative and for Slow Food International’s Seed Working Group in 2021, Jeff was the keynote speaker for the Seed Library Summit as well as an organizer of Slow Food’s Seed Summit. Through his heirloom seed and food activism, Jeff’s work is most broadly a deep commitment to seed and food sovereignty for all. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

It’s the height of summer farmers' markets as community hubs, and this week we're in conversation with Cheetah Tchudi co-founder with his wife Sami and his parents, Susan and Steve Tchudi, of Turkeytail Farm, a small diversified organic family farm serving the community of Butte County California.  Cheetah is also the founder and Program Director of Butte Remediation, providing support to home and property owners by testing soils for contamination, targeting the contaminants with fungi capable of remediating those toxins, and measuring success with follow-up fungal tissue and soil sampling. Cheetah, passionate about mushrooms and fungal life, devised this kind of bioremediation support for his region following the devastation of the Campfire of 2018, which burned much of his farm and farm buildings.  Cheetah joins Cultivating Place for a conversation about the importance of small family farms supporting their communities and connection and diversity as strength from a land perspective. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In a month where there is a lot of talk about what it means to be a citizen of this country – this world even – this week we follow last week’s urban garden conversation with another, this time with Karen Kahle Executive Director of the Civic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnati, where for 80 years the Center has empowered gardeners, grown food, habitat, educational programs, and community in abundance. A very Happy first Octogenarian Birthday to the Civic Garden Center - here’s to many more. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

San Francisco Bay Area’s Greenhouse Project is a cultural and economic restoration garden project making use of what we have and growing on it. This week Cultivating Place is joined by Caitlyn Galloway who shares more about the firm belief of this project that Urban Agriculture is essential to building a sustainable future wherever you might live. The Greenhouse Project is an urban agriculture initiative working to restore and repurpose a historic 2.2-acre agricultural site lined with abandoned agricultural greenhouses in the city’s Portola community into a collaborative, visionary hub for food production, education, connection, and environmental stewardship. Caitlyn Galloway is an artist and a gardener, having been involved in urban agricultural projects for the past 15 years in San Francisco, she is the vision and strategy lead for the Greenhouse Project. Listen in! Bio photos of Caitlyn at the Greenhouse Project Site by Jeff Hunt, Storied: San Francisco, all rights reserved. Photos of 770 Woolsey Street, site of the Greenhouse Project courtesy of the Greenhouse Project, all rights reserved. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

K joins Cultivating Place this week to delve into the long view and deep relationships born of the generosity of seed – and seed people - in our garden lives. Ken Greene – who goes by K - is a seed person. He is the co-founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Library, which in 2004 became the first public library-based seed lending library in the US; in 2008 he went on to co-found with his partner Doug Muller, Hudson Valley Seed Company, a seed, and art company focused on heirloom and open-pollinated vegetable, flower and herb seed. Ever more interested in seed literacy, sovereignty, and cultural seed rematriation, in 2016, K and Shanyn Siegel, a seed work colleague, founded the now dormant non-profit, Seedshed devoted to sharing and supporting the cultural, agricultural, and ecological diversity of seed. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

It is really and truly summer now Happy Summer Solstice Season in the Northern Hemisphere. Are your gardens and parks full of the sound and movements of winged life – the fluttering of moths at your white flowers, at the porch or street light each evening? Dragonflies, mosquitos, bumblebees, and flower flies dancing across your flowers and grasses by day? National Pollinator Week is June 20 – 26, and this week we’re in conversation with Dr. Monika Egerer, pollination ecologist at the Technical University of Munich sharing more about the importance of well-designed urban gardens for pollinator support. Monika researches the ecology and management of production-oriented ecosystems in and around cities. She pursues an interdisciplinary research approach that analyzes connections between biodiversity, environmental and climate protection, ecosystem services and social-ecological issues in urban agricultural systems. A strong focus of her work is the role of insects and plant biodiversity in urban ecosystems, specifically in the context of habitat management, urbanization and climate change. Seems that our gardens as contributions to urban biodiversity depend on our viewing them as habitats and our embrace of an “agroecological” in which the focus on production for our needs (food, flowers, control) and the needs of other lives (ecology) is key. As is a little more wildness... Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Teresa J Speight is a Washington DC-based gardener, garden historian, and podcaster under the name of Cottage in the Court. Teri’s new book out from Bloom! Imprint is BLACK FLORA – a gorgeous look into transformative humans of color and creativity at work with flowers. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we consider the idea of mental health and our gardens from an even more poignant perspective. In the wake of the recent Uvalde and then Oklahoma gun violence deaths and tragedies, I wish this was not such a timely episode, but it is. I am joined this week in conversation by Gabrielle Chanel El, Chanae Pickett, and Ezekiel McCarter - founders of the Long Live Love Foundation. Following the traumatic deaths of Gabrielle’s husband and Chanae and Zeke’s father, the Reverend David McCarter in 2011, and Gabrielle’s eldest son and Chanae and Zeke’s brother, Immanuel, several years later, their very personal and lived mission is to support survivors and victims of traumatic violence in part through the solace, sanctuary, and community of a public healing serenity garden in West Oakland, California. As we prepare for Juneteenth 2022 - listen in this week! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

I think it’s nearly impossible to try and stay abreast of current events, and not simultaneously need to remind ourselves to care for our individual mental health - for ourselves, but hopefully to contribute to the sanity of our collective as well. I was so pleased to read last week that at one of the garden world’s biggest show events, London’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show, held the last week of May, judges awarded a gold medal to a garden entitled the mind garden, designed by Andy Sturgeon and supported by Crocus.  With the idea of mental health care being intertwined with our gardens, this week Cultivating Place revisits a best-of conversation from 2020 with British psychiatrist/psychotherapist, researcher, and gardener, Sue Stuart-Smith, author of "The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature", which explores her many years of research and findings on the physiology of the brain and the creativity and connections cultivated in the brain when we are gardening. In this work “of science, insight and anecdote,” Sue demonstrates that “our understanding of nature and its restorative powers is just beginning to flower.” Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As summer arrives, more than 1 million US households are now engaged in gardening – a number that is double what it was before the pandemic. This week we focus on the communal power and importance of local garden information – provided in-person, on-air, in writing, or online, to help grow gardeners. We’re in conversation with Lyons Filmer and Susan Hayes, creators and hosts of "In The Coastal Garden", a bi-weekly community radio program serving their region of coastal Northern California, their joy and passion provide a great region-specific template for anywhere people garden. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

IN the spirit of May, this week we’re headed out in the garden, or down the block, or up the trail for some planty wonder and magic in the company of Bridget Beth Collins – the creative force, glittering vision, and imagination behind the botanical art of Flora Forager. Bridget is a gardener, a mother, and an artist who often brings all three of her life roles together in her work. She founded the Instagram feed and custom artistry known as Flora Forager in the 2000-teens and has since been the author of three books – The Art of Flora Forager, the Flora Forager ABCs, and most recently the Flower Fairy Journals. Bridget joins us this week from her home and garden in Seattle, Washington to share more about the importance of looking at the world through glittering (flowery) eyes. Listen in! 170617-123_480x480.jpg Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Any gardener and their muscles, bones, joints, and ligaments know that gardening is a full-contact sport (or religion), this week we’re joined by Madeline de Vries Hooper and Jeff Hughes, the founders of GardenFit, a new PBS series focusing on a holistic approach to fitness and taking care of your body while you take care of your garden, because as Madeline and Jeff believe: your body is your best garden tool. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

David Rawle is the founder and force (with contribution and support from his wife, Carol Perkins, and a wide variety of community members in Charleston, SC), behind Theodora Park, a public park in Charleston - designed and cared for (with financial and care planning for the long haul) in a way that is reminiscent of the very best of private gardens: it is open, it is both lively and tranquil, it is filled with beautiful seasonal (native and non-native) plants, it offers places to sit, to play, to splash as well as to gather; it offers artful views representative of and inviting for the entire community - residents and visitors alike - human and more-than-human alike. Theodora Park was opened in 2015 and is dedicated to the memory of David’s mother - Theodora. Happy Mother’s Day to all mothering souls and spaces - may all of our gardens, public and private, be welcoming, nurturing – shall we say mothering - places for all. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In preparation for May and Mother’s Day here in the US, we’re in conversation with Lorene Edwards Forkner, a gardener, a writer, a cook, a mother, a daughter, the garden columnist for the Seattle Times, and known as gardener cook on-line. Lorene joins CP this week to share more about her artistic garden-based daily practice for the last four years, which has resulted in the new book: Color in and Out of the Garden, Watercolor Practices for Painters, Gardeners, and Nature Lovers, out now from Abrams Press. The practice and the book are invitations to lean into her own mission statement in life, seen primarily through the lens of the garden: "look closely, with great heart”. A good blessing for all mothering souls in the world. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In honor of Earth Day on April 22nd, this week, Cultivating Place is in conversation about a person who committed their career to the idea, design, and championing of Parks for the Nature of Everyone. April 26th is the 200th birthday of Frederick Law Olmsted – in celebration and recognition, the National Association for Olmsted Parks is joining with celebration partner locations around the US to host Olmsted200 events, reminding us of the long and valuable legacy of Olmsted – which remains highly relevant for us today. To hear more about Frederick Law Olmsted and his influence on our green spaces to this day, Cultivating Place is joined by Dede Petri, Executive Director of the National Association for Olmsted Parks and John Rowden Senior Director of Bird-Friendly Communities with the Audubon Society. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Nitasha Manchanda is a genetic scientist, a mother, a wife, a gardener and the creator and host of a podcast series entitled The Indian Edit – exploring the inspiring lives of women of the Indian diaspora – living everywhere from Boston, where Nitasha now makes her home, to Germany, Canada, and even returned to India. Subtitled conversations with innovators in design, culture, and entrepreneurship, The Indian Edit launched in May of 2018. While the podcast is not plant-focused, as a gardener herself - from a family of scientists (including a beloved botanist aunt) and gardeners - Nitasha‘s perspective as host of The Indian Edit is a beautiful illustration of how we all - from spice company founders to sari designers, to photographers - take the vocabulary of our landscapes and plants of origin into the rest of our lives with us, no matter where we go. For Nitasha, that is building (and growing) a creative bridge back to India. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Rose Ramirez is a California native plant gardener, basketweaver, photographer, and educator of Chumash descent; Deborah Small is an artist, photographer, and professor at the School of the Arts at California State University, San Marcos.  In preparation for California Native Plant Week 2022 (April 16 - 23), celebrating the botanical biodiversity of the California Floristic Region, Rose and Deborah join Cultivating Place to share more about their new educational and advocacy initiative, Saging the World, on behalf of California’s iconic native white sage, Saliva apiana, sacred to the Indigenous cultures of what is now Southern California and Baja California, Mexico. As part of Saging the World, Rose and Deborah, along with David Bryant of the California Native Plant Society, have coproduced a documentary of the same name, which premieres in LA county on Earth Day, and to which all are invited (tickets required): Saging the World Premiere, Earth Day, Friday, April 22 7 pm - 9 pm, Warner Grande Theatre, 78 W 6th St, San Pedro, CA 90731  The film, created to foster awareness and inspire action for white sage, spotlights the ecological and cultural issues intertwined with white sage, centering the voices of Native advocates who have long protected and cherished this plant. “Saging” has become common in movies, TV shows, social media, and cleansing rituals –people burning sage bundles in the hope of purifying space and clearing bad energy. Instead of healing, the appropriated use of saging in popular culture is having a harmful effect. Indigenous communities have tended a relationship with white sage for thousands of generations. White sage (Salvia apiana) only occurs in southern California and northern Baja California, Mexico. Today, poachers are stealing metric tons of this plant from the wild to supply international demand. The screening will include a panel discussion with Native advocates from the film, as well as a white sage plant giveaway. This Earth Day, go from smudging to seeding as we come together to see plants not just as “resources,” but as “relationships.” The event is sponsored by the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

John Forti is a garden historian, historic garden horticulturist, and slow food advocate. He has put his years of experience and knowledge into The Heirloom Gardener, Traditional Plants, and Skills for the Modern World – inviting us to lean into the breadth and depth of human millennia-long relationship with plant life.   John joins Cultivating Place this week to share more about his work and this compilation, which introduces and/or reminds readers of age-old skills for a more directly lived life - from the distillation of floral essences to the uses of kelp to the relationship between the Algonquin culture’s word for the fruit that in English is known as strawberry, wuttahimneash (or heart berry), being related to the heart health associated with the fruit.  Most importantly, however, The Heirloom Gardener, amplified by Mary Azarian’s brilliant woodcut images, encourages us to upset the apple cart of mass production and commodification and look back to the many streams of land-based wisdom still available to us in order to find a better way forward. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by medical ethnobotanist and Emory professor, Dr. Cassandra Quave who shares with us the very personal story of her quest to develop new ways to fight illness and disease through the healing powers of plants. In today’s world of synthetic pharmaceuticals, Dr. Quave belives our connection to the natural and plant world is in fact our greatest opportunity to discover new life-saving medicines needed in the medical challenges of our time – including pandemics and rising anti-biotic resistance. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Emily Murphy is an ecological gardener, an educator, and an author whose two books focus on gardens of personal and communal purpose. Her 2018 book Grow What You Love, is joined this year by Grow Now: How We Can Save our Health, Communities and Planet One Garden at a Time. With the 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reporting on the impacts, adaptations, and vulnerabilities and dangerous disruption of climate change on our natural systems - disruption affecting billions of people and millions of species - there is an ever greater urgency to act on all levels. Emily Murphy joins us this week to highlight the importance of our gardens as really immediate and direct points of climate activism - contributing to saving our planet one garden at a time. Listen In! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week is a timely and rich with agency conversation on gardens by and for refugee populations. Areti Athanasopoulos is a Denver, Colorado-based landscape architect. After many seasons studying and working around the world, and in collaboration with the International Rescue Committee’s New Roots program, and while in Denver with Denver Urban Gardens, she has recently founded her own non-profit entity focused on gardens for and by refugee populations: ReGeneration Now, continuing her focus on creating gardens for and by refugee populations. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Lisa Waud is a collaborative, large-scale floral and installation artist who likes to invite people in to enjoy flowers, and from there into a conversation about the world, she was the artist behind the 2015 Flower House Detroit – a floral phenomenon in downtown Detroit. Erin Preston-Johnson Bevel is an unschooling mom, a full-time lecturer at Howard University, and a “recovering lawyer” putting her legal experience to work advocating within her Detroit community. She serves on the board of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, which came together with two other longstanding food advocacy groups - Keep Growing Detroit and Oakland Avenue Urban Farm - to create the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund. The DBFLF was co-founded by Erin, Jerry Hebron, Tepfirah Russian, and Dr. Shakara Tyler; the Fund officially launched on Juneteenth 2020. Both Lisa and Erin are advocates and voices for community, integrity, and a healthy regrowing and interweaving of community and land, of growing thoughtfully and intergenerationally into our collective futures.  This is the story of that time when Flower House Detroit decided its next chapter was in the embrace of the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund, where it would grow up into a Children’s Sensory Garden for the community. Having just completed Black History Month and just entered Women’s History Month, this seemed like the perfect - floral and restoration - tale to share forward. Enjoy. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Deep into the Winter season, with February’s full moon behind us, this week Cultivating Place is in conversation with British-based garden photographer Andrew Montgomery, about his new book Winter Gardens. Photographed by Andrew, written by Clare Foster of House & Garden UK and published by Andrew’s new imprint, Montgomery Press, Winter Gardens, in evocative images and crafted words, celebrates the very specific, spare, sometimes hard, nuanced and moody, beauty of cold-climate gardens in this season. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Reports from around the globe in the last 25 years about the alarming loss of biodiversity on our planet sit heavily with every gardener I know. With that in mind and with the hope and the knowledge of the agency we as Gardeners hold in this world, I’m so pleased to be in conversation this week with two men who’ve been working and studying this very aspect of our world, in their place. In July of 2021, they along with their organizations published a report entitled “Conserving Plant Diversity in New England”. This report was conceived by author William Brumback, Director of Conservation Emeritus of the Native Plant Trust. The report is co-authored by Brumback and my two guests this week, The Nature Conservancy’s Director of Conservation Science for the Eastern United States, Mark Anderson, and Michael Pientadosi, current Director of Conservation for the Native Plant Trust. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

Plantlife International is a British conservation charity working nationally and internationally to save threatened wild flowers, plants, and fungi.  With more than 30 years in this work, Plantlife’s members and team of dedicated conservation experts work with landowners, businesses, conservation organizations, community groups and governments, pushing boundaries to save our rarest flora and ensure familiar flowers and plants continue to thrive.  From roadside verge rewilding, to no-mow May, to RuneScape and meadow protection, to conservation campaigning and policy work, Plantlife’s CEO Ian Dunn is with us this week to share more about their goals and strategies – including the important work being done by home gardeners to integrate these goals into the fabric of our everyday lives and spaces. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Coming up on Cultivating Place this week, we’re in conversation with a new generation seed farmer, Petra Page-Mann. Petra is a co-founder with her husband Matthew Goldfarb of Fruition Seeds, a young seed company with a big calling. Fruition is a team of 12 humans "cultivating over 300 varieties of certified organic vegetables, herbs & flowers to surround us all with beauty & abundance in short seasons. In the heart of the Finger Lakes of western New York, unceded Haudenosaunee/Seneca lands, Fruition shares the seeds as well as the tools, inspiration & insight for growing ourselves as well as our gardens, especially those in short growing seasons. They are currently transitioning to being an employee-owned company, and they grow about 60% of their own seed, sourcing the rest primarily from other regional organic seed growers. Fruition is cultivating and learning from an ecosystem-like web of people and places growing and sharing relational seed and seed knowledge at human scale as a direct response to the industrial scale commodification of seed as a way of imagining a new (old) way forward. Listen in. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Judith Larner Lowry is the plantswoman behind Larner Seeds – Seeds for the California Landscape – Restoring California One Garden At A Time, founded in 1977 and still growing strong, based in Bolinas, CA.  Judith is the author of "Gardening with a Wild Heart, Restoring California’s Native Landscapes at Home," published by the University of California Press in 1999, as well as the author of "The Landscaping Ideas of Jays, A Natural History of the Backyard Restoration Garden," published by The UC Press in 2007.  Combined, Judith's seed work, writing, and advocacy have laid and continue to lay critical groundwork for the ecological gardening precepts we are hearing more and more about today, including from the likes of Dr. Doug Tallamy, whose best-selling book “Bringing Nature Home” urging far more planting of native plants in our home gardens to help offset catastrophic biodiversity loss, was also published in 2007. If there is such a thing as an elder statesman, Judith is such an elder seedswoman, and she joins us this week on Cultivating Place to share more about her growing work journey.  Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud,  iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

On Cultivating Place this week, as we revisit a Best Of conversation with Vivien Sansour, the heart and head behind The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library aiming to revive and share forward Palestinian seed heritage and a culture of care and gratitude. Vivien was born in Palestine and spent her early childhood in Bethlehem before she and her family immigrated to North Carolina when she was ten. She writes: “The seed, the seed, the seed….for what is it but a continuation of ourselves? Aren’t we all seeds?" – Vivien Sansour Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As seed catalogues continue to arrive in our mailboxes and in-boxes daily, filling our notebooks and dreams, we take a behind the scenes look at an independent seed source well-known to gardeners and market growers throughout North America: Johnny’s Selected Seeds. We are in conversation with current CEO Dave Melhorn and Lauren Giroux, Director of Product Selection and Trialing Research. Johnny’s stewards one of the largest in-ground seed-trialing programs in the United States. For over 48 years Johnny's Selected Seeds has dedicated to "helping families and friends to feed one another.” Now 100% employee-owned, Johnny’s offers organic seed, F1 hybrid, open-pollinated, and heirloom seed varieties. "Johnny's does not knowingly sell genetically modified seeds"; nor do they "breed new varieties using genetic engineering." Their breeders use "traditional, painstaking methods of natural crossing to create hybrid seeds that are healthy and safe.” They are proud to be "one of the nine original signers of the Safe Seed Pledge,” in 1999, an initiative of the Council for Responsible Genetics. Listen in this week! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

To welcome the new year, Cultivating Place stays with the theme of seeds – this time focusing on seeding our imaginations in conversation with Diane Wilson writer, gardener, emeritus executive director of Dream of Wild Health and, more recently, emeritus executive director of The Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance. Diane has long interwoven her gardening and her advocacy work with her writing, and her first novel, The Seed Keeper, was published by Milkweed press in 2021. Join us for more about Diane’s journey of discovering, sharing, and celebrating seeds and Indigenous cultural recovery through the knowledge and history that seeds hold, and the future they make possible. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As a farewell to the calendar year that has been, and a welcome/seeding for the new year that will be, I am joined by seed person and agent of growing transformational change - Kellee Matsushita-Tseng. Known as Brave New Seed online, Kellee is a Yonsei (fourth generation) queer, Japanese-Chinese American, as well as the farm-garden assistant manager at the UC Santa Cruz Center for AgroEcology, and a member of the seed research and growing collective Second Generation Seeds, which specializes in seeds of the Asian Diaspora. Kellee’s work focuses on sharing, education, and building a movement towards seed sovereignty as a means of cultivating community health and working for collective liberation. Kellee serves on the board of directors at the National Young Farmers Coalition and also organizes with the Asian American Farmers Alliance. Her leadership voice is one of clarity, integrity, and communal intention for a new year - and growing the world we want to live in. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Gary Paul Nabhan is a gardener, an agricultural ecologist, an ethnobotanist, and an ecumenical Franciscan Brother based in Patagonia, Arizona. He is the author of a host of books covering a diversity of plant-relationship topics – from pollinators to food policy, to love letters to his favorite landscapes. The heart of his work is fed by his own lifelong enchantment with the world – and his nearly lifelong commitment to healing wounded landscapes from a primary objective of consciously conserving healthy relationships on all levels and planes. In all he does, Gary examines our human relationships to plants and places not just as a matter of important pragmatics but as a matter of generosity, spirit, and poetics - I cannot think of a better time of year to share forward that exact kind of enchantment and hopeful work. Gary Paul Nabhan joins Cultivating Place this week - listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

Winter in the Northern Hemisphere is a time of dormancy for the plant and animal kingdoms alike. While it may look relatively still and quiet, it is in fact a period of unseen activity worth looking at and learning from – for perspective and possibilities. This is our final offering for your garden-based preparations for the Winter Solstice officially occurring on December 21st at a little before 8 am Pacific/11 am Eastern time. The Solstice is not just a date and time, but a turning and inflection point in our annual cycle of growth. In honor of that cycle, and its periods of rest – daily, weekly, annually, and throughout cycles of years - we’re joined today in conversation with farmer, gardener and community advocate, Devorah Brous – with whom we explore the importance of rest, dormancy and sabbatical as a way to refuel, to rethink, and to rejuvenate in all health and creativity for our work and cycles ahead. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As another offering to all of you in your gardens tending toward the Solstice in just a few weeks on December 21st, this week we are in conversation with award-winning poet and life-long home gardener Camille Dungy. Camille is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award, and the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History (W.W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Camille is also a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. In our conversation, we explore the intertwining of poetry, gardening, life, and trophic cascades in each of them. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Mike Sullivan is the author of "The trees in San Francisco", Jason Dewees is a horticulturist and author of "Designing with Palms", and Richard Turner is a designer, consultant, the Emeritus Editor of Pacific Horticulture, and co-editor of "Trees of Golden Gate Park". The three men got together in the early days of the Pandemic and put their imaginations and frustrations to work creating self-guided, pop-up, sidewalk-chalked, walking tours of the trees of the various neighborhoods of San Francisco. In the process, and at a time of high rates of emotional isolation for many, the three tree geeks got a city of people outside into the fresh air to meet and know better their tree neighbors all around them. With a whole new winter of pandemic complications and complexities in front of us, and in introducing urban-dwelling humans to their trees, and these trees to their people, the "three tree geeks of San Francisco” - and all our other knowledgeable tree folk doing likeminded work in the world – provide us a journey lesson on looking, listening and living. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week I’m thankful for my own garden, of course, but also for the good fresh food grown for all of us by so many hard-working souls wherever you are, from San Francisco to Cincinnati to Syracuse, and here where I am. Pyramid Farms is a small organic, integrated family farm of humans led by Matthew Martin and Lisa Carle. Famous for the carrots, and also growing more than 30 varieties of fresh produce and flowers year-round, living with the soil, with flora and fauna and the seasons of their place, and with the 365 days a year of hard work that farming is. They wouldn’t do life any other way, and as Matthew and Lisa say – you can taste the love. It’s a good week for this kind of gratitude. Listen in! Photos courtesy of Pyramid Farms, all rights reserved. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As a gardener and a human in this exact time on our planet, and in this specific season of the year - a season of communal gathering and thankfulness at the tail end of the growing season in the Northern Hemisphere, this week we celebrate Family, Kin, & Kinship. We are joined in this conversational celebration by Gavin Van Horn and Rowen White sharing with us about a new multi-volume collection of written voices entitled "Kinship Belonging in a World of Relations" out now from the Center for Humans and Nature, based in Chicago. Gavin is the creative and executive director for the Center for Humans and Nature and served as co-editor on the Kinship series with Robin Wall Kimmerer and John Hausdoerffer. Rowen is a seed keeper, a mother, and a farmer from the Mohawk community as well as being a passionate activist for Indigenous seed and food sovereignty. She is the educational director and lead mentor of Sierra Seeds an innovative Indigenous seed bank and land-based educational organization located in Nevada city, California. Rowen is the founder of the Indigenous Seedkeepers Network and her essay "Sky Woman’s Garden" appears in Partners the third volume of the five-volume Kinship series. Just like all kinds of gardens, these voices raised together in this uplifting series is all about growing together in this world. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Fall and early winter are the perfect time in much of the Northern Hemisphere to plant bulbs, woody shrubs and trees, herbaceous perennials, and perennial vines in the landscape. It is also a good time to seed many spring-blooming native(and non-native) annuals. So, I thought it was just the right time of year as well to chat a little with Heather McCargo of the Wild Seed Project in Portland, Maine. Focused on the relationship between seed grown native plants in cultivated landscapes and reweaving healthy ecosystems across our world, Heather founded The Wild Seed Project and served as its executive Director from 2014 – 2021. She is currently the seed program manager for the project. The Wild Seed Project envisions a landscape where people help re-populate the landscape to be abundant with native plants (primarily grown from seed) so that we can support wildlife, biodiversity, and buffer the effects of climate change. They invite gardeners around the country - the world in fact – to take their rewild pledge committing to working towards including a minimum of 70% seed-grown native plants in your garden. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Last week on Cultivating Place, we looked at Gardens and history through the lens of a historic Garden Cemetery – this week we look at Garden History through the interpretive lens of how we preserve, interpret, codify and share gardens past and present. We are in conversation with Christopher Woodward, Director of the Garden Museum in London. Garden history & Garden hindsight come together in the museum and in this week's conversation, helping us to interpret and plan for our shared Garden futures. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Just in time for Samhain, All Hallow’s Eve, and Day of the Dead observances, this week we explore the sacred, green and communal space of a cemetery – specifically Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts. Opened in the 1830s, Mt. Auburn was the first of a genre of so-called Garden Cemeteries in the U.S. Horticulturist Dave Barnett is the Emeritus President and CEO of Mt. Auburn. After nearly 30 years of growing the ecological, horticultural, and cultural legacy of Mt. Auburn, Dave retired this past September. I caught up with him earlier this year to explore the lessons of Mt. Auburn at this time. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place we’re in delicious conversation with Chef Dave Smoke McCluskey, founder of Corn Mafia, and a grower/producer of such traditional corn products as Longhouse Selections’ hominy, masa, and grits. Based in South Carolina, Dave is an Indigenous foods educator and member of the Mohawk Nation, who invites us all to think about the history of the ingredients in our food, especially those originating from the Native American lands we in the US live on. Dave’s belief in the power of flavorful, real food stems from a very basic and lifelong curiosity about his peoples’ culinary past and trying to determine not only “What has been lost?”, but also how to re-envision, and imaginatively recreate a more accurate, flavorful, and probable culinary narrative for the past, present, and future. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we enter the season of seed saving, of easing into dormancy, beginning to consider next season through the lens of the last season, of forward planning, this week Cultivating Place explores some big thinking for our shared future in conversation with Severine Von Tscharner Fleming, one of the women featured in The Earth in Her Hands, 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In our second episode focusing on the inspiring beauty of dry gardens and the plants and people who love them, Cultivating Place is joined this week by photo journalist Saxon Holt. The sole photographer on more than 30 garden books, Saxon is also owner of the PhotoBotanic Garden library and director of the Summer-Dry Project. Saxon’s most recent book, a collaboration with writer Nora Harlow, is Gardening in Summer-Dry Climates, plants for a lush, water-conscious landscape, published by Timber Press in 2020. The vision of the Summer-Dry Project is that "in the midst of tumultuous climate change, it’s all the more important that gardeners be stewards of the land, attuned to the local environment on behalf of all creatures. The Summer-Dry Project provides gardeners in summer-dry climates authoritative plant information and inspiring photos that encourage sustainable garden practices." Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we near the close of a dry, dry season in the generally dry climates of much of the US west, this week Cultivating Place has the first of a two-episode focus on the inspiring beauty of dry gardens and the plants and people who love them. We start off with some high style in dry gardens with garden designer Daniel Nolan, owner of Daniel Nolan Design and author of Dry Gardens, High Style for Low Water Gardens, published in 2018 by Rizzoli Press, and photographed by Caitlin Atkinson. In the opening to his book, Daniel notes that “some of the most successful gardens are not about human’s control over nature, but about how human’s respond respectfully to their surroundings.” Daniel’s work, which is consistently focused on strong design using as little water as possible, covers regions as wide ranging as Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, California and the West Coast generally. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Ernesto Alvarado is a Mexican-born, Southern California-based native plant and seed teacher and student. He is currently the Native Plant Nursery Assistant at the Riverside Corona Resource Conservation District where he specializes in seed and native plants for gardening and greater connection to the world around him – and us. While I told you that last week was the second in a two-part series in the sacred and much-needed ritual and ceremony that the seasonal cycles of our plants and gardens – I would say this is a bonus third episode in this vein. I think you will agree. As a native plant and seed teacher and student, Ernesto’s greatest hope is to have his work serve as a green and living bridge for people to develop a deeper connection to the life all around them. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

September, October, and November are traditional harvest celebration months in the Northern Hemisphere from variations on Octoberfests to those around the idea of Thanksgiving. The ancient Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot is celebrated from the full moon on September 20th to September 27th this year, with the Autumnal Equinox occurring on the 22nd. This week on Cultivating Place we enjoy the second of two conversations on the sacred every day and the sacred in the seasonal. We are joined from Philadelphia by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, co-founder of The Shalom Center, which equips activists and spiritual leaders with awareness and skills needed to lead in shaping a transformed and transformative Judaism that can help create a world of peace, justice, healing for the earth, and respect for the interconnectedness of all life. A long-time activist for social and environmental justice, Rabbi Waskow is also the author of Seasons of our Joy, which brings reverent renewal to the ancient agricultural and seasons-based celebrations of the Abrahamic religions. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we tend toward the Autumnal Equinox on September 22nd here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are deep in a period of time full of sacred seasonal celebrations and observances based on the cycles of the moon, of the sun, and of the growing season ending with harvest and simultaneously beginning again with the dormancy of seed and soil. Late summer to early fall holds the Islamic and Jewish New Year celebrations, early harvest celebrations and a shift in the light and color, in the garden foods and flavors, fragrances and flowers of our days. This week Cultivating Place offers out the first in a two-part series on the sacred of the everyday in our seasonal garden lives, the first in conversation with London-based photographer, artist, and Vicar's wife Kristin Perers, whose works and days are intentionally grounded in bits of nature and color all around her. Kristin shares her abiding passions and what the everyday sacred means in action in ways both small and large, in ways that are seasonally grounded by year and seasonally oriented across her life. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

On Cultivating Place this week we celebrate (and say farewell) to the fullness of summer at its calendar-end with Labor Day weekend in full view here in the US. We do this with some moving and wonderful sounds of a summer concert series not only held in but inspired by a remarkable urban garden: the Capital Public Radio Garden at Sacramento State University, a garden of food, habitat, gathering, season, and meaning in California’s capital city of Sacramento, California. We’re in conversation with Jennifer Reason, musician, CapRadio’s Mid-Day Classical Music Host and Summer Garden Concert Director, and with CapRadio’s Garden Coordinator Nicole McDavid. They - the women, the concert series musicians and music, the garden itself - all remind us of just how much one garden can hold, no less than the breadth and depth of our planet’s seasonal faces and our incredibly diverse expressions of humanity – in grief, in community, and in joy. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In our final episode focusing specifically on ecologically rich and contributing gardens, we learn some innovative lessons in built ecology. Literally. Rebecca McMackin is an ecologically focused horticulturist and garden designer. For the past decade, she has been the Director of Horticulture for Brooklyn Bridge Park, an ecologically minded landscape constructed from the soil up on repurposed post-industrial shipping piers jutting out over New York’s East River beneath the iconic namesake bridge. Rebecca and her horticultural team care for the diversity of life within this 85-acre parkland organically and with an emphasis on habitat creation for birds, butterflies, and soil microorganisms – as well as visiting humans. Rebecca introduced me earlier this year at the Metro Hort Group’s annual Plant-O-Rama event, and I have had the pleasure of hearing her speak several times since then. Rebecca joins us this week to share more about rebuilding ecology where you can – and, she notes, if they can do it on concrete shipping piers over the East River in New York City – we can all do it on our own terms and in our unique conditions too. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

At a time when our gardens large and small often feel more important than ever, I think our focus on exactly what our gardens contain and consist of is also more important than ever. In this second in a three-part celebration of gardens that offer back more than they consume, I’m pleased to be speaking this week with Owen Wormser. Based in Western Massachusetts, Owen is the founder of Abound Design, providing design & consulting for regenerative, sustainability-focused landscapes. He is also the co-founder with traditional and clinical herbalist Chris Marano, of the non-profit Local Harmony, focused on encouraging and creating community-driven regeneration. Finally, Owen is the author of a new book entitled Lawns into Meadows, Growing a Regenerative Landscape, out now from Stone Pier Press. Owen joins us to share more on his deep belief in the planet’s tendency towards abundance. Listen in. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In the heat of the dog days of summer, Cultivating Place celebrates the farms and gardens striving to not draw down resources but to contribute resources back into the world's flow of energy: fro providing shade, food, and retreat, these kinds of gardens are also replenishing rather than drawing down or polluting groundwater, they are sequestering carbon rather than spewing it, they are growing soil and mending the torn fabric of habitat corridors one urban, suburban, and rural home garden at a time. Many gardeners will remember with delight reading Gaia’s Garden by author and activist Toby Hemenway, originally published in 2001. Toby passed in Sebastapol, CA in 2016, but not before he lit a spark and passed a metaphoric mantle to today’s guest, Matthew Trumm. Matthew went on to learn under Dr. Elaine Ingham, among other mentors and has for years been learning from the wisdom of the land itself – first near rural Berry Creek, California before the #CampFire in 2018, and for the last handful or years also on an urban lot in Oroville, CA. I was introduced to Matthew by CP producer Matt Fidler, who mentioned over Zoom one day in lockdown: "you have to see this guy’s backyard – it’s amazing!" And so today, Matt Fidler and I take you on an actual field trip to the energetic, permaculture-regenerative-urban agriculture-food forestry-and indigenous-land-stewardship informed back yard paradise Matthew Trumm tends and grows with. He is a teacher, designer, activist, and a Gardener with a capital G. Over the course of our conversation and tour, we begin in Matthew’s house, head out to the garden itself and end up with our heads and hearts in the stars of all that is possible through our garden relationships. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place we continue our high-elevation garden view, now in Vail, Colorado at The Betty Ford Alpine Gardens, leaders in the research and conservation of North American alpine plant communities. The Alpine Zone has long been one of interest to plant enthusiasts worldwide across time and space for the sheer admiration for and interest in these rugged and resourceful plants and wildlife who’ve evolved to endure and thrive in the Alpine’s extreme conditions – extreme cold, wind, sun, heat, drought and/or snow and ice. As the conditions of our generous planet change with the climate crisis, the Alpine Zones around the globe become a last refuge for plants and wildlife migrating in search of cooler conditions. As a result, the Alpine Zone is of great interest to researchers looking not only preserve the beauty, diversity, and integrity of these highly sensitive environments, but also looking to them for lessons on adaptation for us all. Nicola Ripley is the Executive Director and Nick Courtens is the Curator of Plant Collections at The Betty Ford Alpine Gardens. Nicola and Nick join me this week in a conversation about their high-elevation enthusiasm and efforts. For more information and many more resources and images, please see the full post at www.cultivatingplace.com under the Podcast tab. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place we gain a little perspective with a lot of altitude as we begin a two-part series on 'Gardening at Elevation’. Isa Catto is a mother and partner, a fine and textile artist, a gardener, and a writer. Isa’s multi-faceted gardens at 8,000 ft in Woody Creek, Colorado are rooted in generations of family. in connection to community, and in love of place. Her gardens feed her family, her creativity, her soul, and her desire to contribute. Isa’s gardens, called Mojo Gardens are featured in Under Western Skies, Visionary Gardens from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast (Timber Press, 2021) on which I collaborated with photographer Caitlin Atkinson. I will be joining Isa in Aspen, Colorado this summer as the Jessica Catto Dialogues speaker for the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies on the 11th of August. Isa joins us this week to share more about her artistic garden life story. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Hannah Gardner is a gardener, writer, and mother. She is a garden designer and plantswoman with a passion for traveling the world to learn about and meet plants and their communities in their places, from Estonia to the Canaries, Northern Israel to the wildflower meadows of the United Kingdom, where she makes her home. Her longtime column in Gardens Illustrated entitled "The Outsider”, which ran from 2017 to 2020 is a trove of adventurous armchair plant and garden travel. The botanical lessons she's learned globally inform her organic horticultural and floriculture work right at home and give inspiration to all of us for better botanical holiday making ourselves. She is a firm believer in the 'Imaginative Possibilities' born of broadening our horizons through travel. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

David Godshall is a landscape architect, gardener, and meta-garden philosopher making his way with his young family and his Terremoto Landscape Architecture design studio team in Los Angeles. The Terremoto team was featured as one of Elle Décor’s A List of designers in 2021. David’s LA home garden and his perspective on adventurous gardening and design are featured in Under Western Skies, on which I collaborated with photographer Caitlin Atkinson. David joins Cultivating Place this week, and as he shares in our conversation: "Garden building is civilization-building,” it should be done with creativity and integrity at all levels. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Bonnie J Clark is a professor of anthropology at the University of Denver. Her new book "Finding Solace in the Soil, Archaeology of Gardens and Gardeners at Amache" (University Press of Colorado, 2020) traces six field seasons of her research and immersion into the lives of Japanese Americans held at the Amache prison camp, which was active on the high plains of Colorado from 1942 to 1945. With Amache already designated a National Historic Landmark, and with bills before both the US House of Representatives and the Senate to make Amache a part of the National Park Service, Bonnie joins Cultivating Place this week to share more about what it means to be a gardener and a human. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

Ali Meders-Knight is a Mechoopda tribal member whose traditional and present homelands are based in interior Northern California, a mother of five, and a traditional basketweaver in Chico, CA she is also a tribal liaison working to form partnerships for federal forest stewardship contracting and tribal forestry programs authorized in the 2018 Farm Bill. She has been a Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) practitioner for over 20 years, creating, collaborating on, and leading decolonized environmental education and land restoration projects with Chico State University and the City of Chico. In 2009 she envisioned and helped to manifest a unique 17-acre interactive food forest and interpretive park in North Chico known as Verbena Fields. This restoration of a small slice of the degraded watershed and its native plants works to heal land while educating the larger human community about the rich ecological heritage of the Mechoopda people. As Ali expresses in all aspects of her cultivating practice, especially as the founder of the Chico Traditional Ecological Knowledge Program: "Wassa Honi Mep! (Keep your heart's intentions good!)” In her specific place, she is a model for cultivators everywhere in traditional ecological knowledge providing a saving grace for returning health and prosperity to lands, economies, and communities. As we enter in July, join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

At a time in the gardening world when we're hearing the phrase "ecologically functional gardens" and "ecological landscape design" with great regularity, Cultivating Place is pleased to be joined this week by Kelly Norris. Kelly is an avid gardener, a former nursery owner and plant breeder, and an award-winning author. Based in Des Moines Iowa, he is recently retired from his role as Director of Horticulture and Education at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden and his newest book, "New Naturalism, Designing and Planting a Resilient, Ecologically Vibrant Home Garden” (Cool Springs Press, 2021) helps all of us to demystify what an ecologically functional and still incredibly beautiful and gratifying home garden means. It’s a perfect listen for the long hot gardening days of the Summer Solstice season. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit ww.cultivatingplace.com.

Jessica Walliser is an avid gardener and professional horticulturist – working in the business of plants and gardening since the tender age of 15. As she has matured as a gardener, so too have her understandings and passions, and she now considers herself a devoted bug lover as well as a devoted plant lover because, you know, these two groups of lives we love are wholly interdependent. Jessica is a former garden podcaster, a co-founder of the online gardening resource Savvy Gardening, and the author of many books reflective of her journey and knowledge, including "Good Bug, Bad Bug"; "Attracting Beneficial Insects to your Garden", and most recently, "Plant Partners: Science-Based Companion Planting Strategies” (Artisan Press, 2020). Listen in this week as we discuss how far we’ve come in our mainstream gardening practices this past 50 years, from companion planting to cover cropping, interplanting to the joys of watching predatory robber flies help control Japanese beetles. We also cover the even greater joy of knowing that more life in your garden equals more health in your garden life. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Through the many twists and turns of life, hers including a life-threatening battle with an auto-immune disorder and lung cancer, Claire’s organizing ethos has become: “Go Gently." An environmental advocate before turning to flowers as her life path, Claire is also the author/co-creator of a new book entitled “The Healing Power of Flowers”, which looks around the year at the meaning, magic, and medicine of 80 flowers. The book, photographed by Eva Nemeth, is an update and expansion on the Victorian Language of flowers, with seasonality and sustainability at its heart. As we in the Northern Hemisphere approach the Summer Solstice, Claire shares more about her gentle garden and floral life journey. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Debra Prinzing is the founder and leader of The Slow Flowers Society – She joins Cultivating Place in this first week of summer (after Memorial Day in the US and before the Summer Solstice in a few weeks) to share more about the many facets of her passion for being a voice for the floral world. Debra Prinzing is the founder and leader of The Slow Flowers Society. As a Seattle-based writer, speaker and leading advocate for American Grown Flowers, Debra’s many Slow Flowers-branded projects have convened a national conversation that stimulates consumers and professionals alike to make conscious choices about the flowers in their lives. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a team of plant folks known as Refugia is growing connection among places and people from their beautifully designed native plant gardens and radiating out from those. This week, Cultivating Place is joined by Refugia founder Jeff Lorenz, by stewardship manager Esther Scanlon, by Lead Project Manager Ronnie Ludwig, and Melissa Nase Refugia’s lead Landscape Designer and Greenhouse Manager. The team shares the process and ethos of Refugia as they design, create and help to steward functional landscapes that are ecologically beneficial, beautiful, and resilient - and perhaps most importantly, connective. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Loree Bohl is the Portland Oregon-based founder and visionary gardener behind the well-known and well-loved Danger Garden Blog. In true Danger Garden fashion, Loree’s new book Fearless Gardening empowers us all to be bold, break the rules and grow what you love. Loree joins Cultivating Place this week to empower all of us with a sense of boldness in the garden. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we have the second of a two-part series celebrating the publication of Under Western Skies in conversation with landscape architect Christie Green, of Radicle landscape architecture based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Radicle as in the first intrepid and primary growing root of a seedling and the idea of advocating for fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

CAITLIN ATKINSON is a photographer of places, spaces, and all things botanical. She has been my partner this past 2 + years in creating our new book Under Western Skies, Visionary Gardens from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast, publishing on May 11 of 2021. Conceived by Caitlin, the book is really an expression of our shared love for the places and plants and plantspeople of the West crafting garden spaces of soul, and this week on Cultivating Place, Caitlin joins me in conversation to discuss more deeply this passion project of ours. Listen in - the views are stunning (and soulful). Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Claire Ratinon is a gardener, a writer, and a passionate advocate for the growing a food no matter where you live or how small a space you might live it. She herself first fell in love with growing her own food while living in a one-room flat. Born in Mauritius and raised in England, her horticultural work is deeply interested in how the hunger and heartache of our times, and of re-finding or rooting our own senses of identity starting in the vegetable garden. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

It’s spring in the northern hemisphere (even though snow is still making visitations to parts of North American right now), and gardeners across the hemisphere are itching to get started with their summer vegetable gardens. That age-old and annual question of “when warm summer crops can safely be planted outside" is already high on peoples' lists of garden excitements and anxieties. Cultivating Place is joined this week by the leader of an event and author of a book both known as TOMATOMANIA. Scott Daigre is the owner of PowerPlant Garden Design in Ojai California, and he is a dedicated home gardener and self-proclaimed tomatomaniac. It's earth week and among the garden’s earthiest pleasures are these succulent summer fruits. Scott joins us from his home and trial garden in Ojaiwhere he is deep into the planning for the warm season vegetable garden and all her delights. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

April 17 through 24th 2021 is California Native Week, designated by the California State Legislature in 2010 as an annual celebration of the fantastic diversity of plants on whom this large expanse of unique and uniquely beautiful land and history rests in so many ways. The California Floristic Province is one of the Biodiversity Hot Spots on Earth and as the most populous state in the US, California also has an incredible diversity of humans making their lives here as well. In honor of these plants and their communities, Cultivating Place speaks this week with members of the California Native Plant Society community to chat about what CNPS is, and what it is striving to grow into more fully. It is a small, candid look into how the environmental conservation world generally is meeting this moment in time through the lens of one organization. In looking back over the course of this last year, and many years and decades prior, there is renewed clarity and urgency around the environmental world generally having quite a bit of acknowledging and resetting to do for itself and for the greater benefit of the human and greater than the human world around us. It is in that spirit that I am joined today by CNPS staff member Liv O’Keefe, Senior Director of Public Affairs; by Cris Sarabia, Conservation Director of the Palos Verdes Peninsula land Conservancy and the chair of the board of CNPS, a volunteer position; and finally, by John L. Sanders, Founder, and Director of the Delphinus School of Natural History, who is a CNPS community member and volunteer consultant for the society. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Amyrose Foll is a mother, a farmer, and a big thinker. As the executive director and founder of the multifaceted Virginia Free Farm at Spotted Pig Holler in Kents Store Virginia – she is looking to reimagine the foodshed of her world – and ours. As Spring takes hold and the warm growing season greens our northern Hemisphere gardens and farms, Amyrose sees a greater foodshed model within reach. Join Cultivating Place in conversation with Amyrose this week! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Just in time for spring and that itch we gardeners - new and long time - have to get the summer vegetables into the ground, Cultivating Place revisit a favorite conversation with grow-your-own revolutionary, Brie Arthur – author of the "Foodscape Revolution" and "Gardening with Grains". Her enthusiasm will get your season growing – join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Having just moved across the seasonal threshold of the Vernal Equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere, this week we continue our focus on land and land and ecology-based garden projects – this time in conversation with horticulturist and plantswoman Laura Ekasetya. I spoke with Laura late last season checking in with her on her work as Director and Head Horticulturist at the famed Lurie Garden in Chicago’s Millennium Park -landscape architecture by Gustafson, Guthrie & Nichol and planting plans by Piet Oudolf. Laura’s decade at the Lurie Garden ended in January of 2021. Listen in this week! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Here we are – mid-way into Women’s History Month, one year after the publication of The Earth in Her Hands. In honor of these two thresholds, this week on CP we offer out a conversation with one of the extraordinary women working in the world of plants featured in the book: Edwina Von Gal - a landscape designer based on New York’s Long Island. Having designed landscapes for the rich and famous in the New York area it was midway through her career that Edwina had an epiphany about the potential impact for the better or worse of how gardens are cared for in our world. In order to help tilt the balance back toward gardens large and small being positive contributors to the life, health, habitat and biodiversity of our world – she founded The Perfect Earth Project – promoting toxin free lawns and landscapes for the people, pets, and the planet. In the last few years, Edwina has expanded her mission with advocacy known as 2/3rd for the birds – in collaboration with the research of Dr. Doug Tallamy – urging all residential and campus landscapes to dedicate 2/3rd of their plantings to be native plants for habitat value and to commit to going toxin free. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As the vernal equinox is imminent for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, a conversation on balance and our importance as humans in the balance of natural systems. Lorena Gorbet is a Mountain Maidu elder in Northeastern California, a mother, a basket weaver, a land restoration activist, and an educator. She joins Cultivating Place this week to share more about the balanced systems thinking of the traditional ecological knowledge of her culture. Listen in! The Maidu Summit Consortium’s mission is "to preserve, protect, and promote the Mountain Maidu Homeland with a united voice. The Maidu Summit Consortium envisions re-acquired ancestral lands as a vast and unique park system dedicated to the purposes of education, healing, protection, and ecosystem management based upon the Maidu cultural and philosophic perspectives, as expressed through traditional ecology.” Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

It’s the first week of March and true spring let alone summer is still a ways off for many of us. This week on Cultivating Place, we lean into the last aspects of the winter season and head North - to learn more about the enthusiastic and intrepid deep winter and season extending gardening of the inimitable Niki Jabbour. Her abundant year-round gardening on the 45th parallel will inspire anyone. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we’re back stateside to visit with a longtime gardener and garden writer also engaged in a new level of relationship with her new plot of land. Page Dickey joins us to talk about the leaving and grieving of one garden, and the getting to know and love a new garden and its nature – all of which grows her. Her new book “Uprooted" is out now. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As Lunar New Year celebrations continue, we travel to Hokkaido, a northern Island of Japan to celebrate an amazing intertwining of the wild and cultivated, the sustainable and the regenerative (for land and people) at The Tokachi Millenium Forest in Hokkaido, Japan. Dan Pearson is a landscape and garden designer for whom an understanding of plant ecology along with an appreciation for natural landscapes inspires his acclaimed designs around the world – including that at the Tokachi Millenium Forest. Midori Shintani is the head gardener at the Tokachi Millennium Forest. Having trained as a gardener and horticulturist in Japan and Europe, she joined the Tokachi Millennium Forest team in 2008. Under her care, the Millennium Forest and its gardens merge a “new Japanese horticulture“ with the surrounding wild nature. Midori was featured in my first book The Earth in Her Hands, 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants (Timber Press, 2020). Dan and Midori's inspiring and collaborative work at the Tokachi Millennium Forest really speaks to gardeners around the globe who want to reconnect with the ecological life of the land, plants and animals on that land. The Tokachi Millennium Forest and its many gardens exemplifies a new naturalistic gardening which integrates culture, aesthetics, and horticultural traditions of both east and west. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

On February 12th, the Lunar New Year begins. Celebrated by Asian cultures across the globe, this week Cultivating Place speaks with Eric Hsu, a plantsman of Taiwanese descent particularly interested in following the threads of history back to the many Asian and Asian immigrant contributions to western horticulture in the US. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week to welcome February we revisit a favorite conversation from our last season - a good reminder to mind the way you spend your days - added together they are what will grow your life. ENJOY! Melanie Falick is a maker of many things by hand, and in her work from knitting to gardening, welding to baking, she explores the connection between what we do with our hands in our own lives and our quality of life and sense of wellbeing. In 2015, Melanie left her 15-year corporate career in the publishing world without a completely clear sense of what she would - or wanted to do- next. Her intuition told her that whatever it was, it would involve engagement with the handwork – knitting, sewing, time in the garden – that she loved, but that she had moved away from personal direct contact with in her career. In the course of making many things following her “retirement" of sorts, it while crafting a simple folded paper box, a box of incredibly basic utility, that she had an epiphany: “in a circuitous way” in all her creative making, she was trying to connect to her own survival – and that impulse was tied inextricably to her own sense of self, capability, and connection to others – ancestors, descendants, community. In these past few months of shelter in place, I think many of us, male, female, old and young across the globe, have had a renaissance in our own psyches of this same impulse. Melanie and I actually chatted in February, before the shut-down, which seems prescient somehow in hindsight, and I think speaks to the fact that this growing global dissatisfaction with what we have been told “success” is, has been in the making for a very long time. Enjoy this conversation about her newest book, “Making a Life, Working by Hand and Discovering the Life You Are Meant to Live” (Artisan Press, 2019), in which she explores how others have been manifesting this impulse and leading lives of great connection and meaning long before Covid-19, and how they might be role models for any one of us in making our own lives.

This week on Cultivating Place we lean into the spirit of the season and the traditional Jewish festival Tu B’Shevat, or New Year of the Trees in conversation with Karen Flotte, with the Mitzvah Garden at the Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis, Missouri. The New Year of the Trees seems like a perfect celebration in this time of dormancy just before the sap begins rising in most living things looking towards spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

MaryLynn Mack is a renaissance woman and leading voice in the world of public gardens today. After beginning her career in the Navy, her experiences have taken her in many directions, including 16 years in Phoenix at the Desert Botanical Garden, and now as Chief Operating Officer of the South Coast Botanic Garden in Palos Verdes, Ca. In the last decade, she has served on the American Public Gardens Association (APGA) Board of Directors and is the current Vice President, the incoming President, as well as the inaugural Chair of the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEAS) Committee. She joins us to share more about her journey and some of her big-hearted, brave IDEAS for horticulture and public gardens as we move forward. She believes that public gardens can save us all. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we continue our FRESH STARTS series in conversation with a long established friend in the gardening world, Doug Tallamy. His latest book Nature’s Best Hope envisions a fresh look at and commitment to rethinking how much of suburban United States sees, uses, and cultivates their places, with an eye toward a Homegrown National Park. Join us! All photos courtesy of Doug Tallamy and www.HomegrownNationalPark.org Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

To kick off the new year, Cultivating Place offers out the first in what will be an ongoing and intermittent series exploring Fresh Starts in our horticultural and gardening world. Following up on last week’s show with Duron Chavis, in which we explored some of the obstacles, hobbles and even failures of imagination in the botanic and garden world, this week we dive into a botanic garden endeavoring to imagine a fresh start to what they do, how they do it, and to whom it is of greatest service. The Botanic Garden at Smith College opened its well-endowed collection in 1895 and celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2020. This week’ we’re are in conversation with Tim Johnson Director of the Garden going on 4 years now, and Jamila dePeiza-Kern, a student in her Junior year at Smith and involved with the garden since the earliest days of her freshman year. As these two share in our conversation, the Botanic Garden at Smith College, the original design for which was created by Frederick Law Olmsted, is a venerable university-based botanic garden striving to meet the needs of our times with intelligence, heart and imagination. Join us to hear more on Cultivating Place this week. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In honor of the losses, griefs, revisions, and transformations in our world this last year, and in honor of the hopes we all hold in our gardens and our hearts for 2021 – we welcome today the muscular voice and vision of Duron Chavis. Duron is an urban farmer, community activist and advocate in Richmond, Virginia. His passionate voice for the power of gardening and people is loud and clear in our times. Join us to hear more on Cultivating Place this week. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In this first week of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, Cultivating Place speaks this week with medicinal and habitat gardener Sayaka Lean of the Herb Pharm in Southern Oregon. Informed by her own Japanese cultural gardening traditions, Sayaka is the lead gardener of the Herb Pharm’s public medicinal plant display garden (the Botanical Education Garden), where she cultivates more than 500 native and non-native medicinal plants from around the world. Sayaka engages the garden as well in community collaborations with United Plant Savers, whose work is to protect and raise awareness about the medicinal plants of North America, and as a Flagship Farm for the Oregon Bee Project/Atlas out of Oregon State University. It is good medicine for the season. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In honor of the Solstice on December 21st, Cultivating Place speaks this week with Brooklyn-born farmer/horticulturist/floral designer, activist, and daughter, Amber Tamm. Amber’s journey and work invite us to Imagine so much more in our gardened world. Listen In! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place we continue our winter greening cheer in conversation with Todd Carr and Carter Harrington of Hort and Pott, a botanical studio in Upstate NY dedicated to embracing the seasons, celebrating the natural world through handcrafted botanical works, and reimagining the relationships between people and the natural world through botanically driven design. You won’t want to miss this cozy winter fireside chat encouraging us all to awaken the sublime as we welcome winter. Listen in next week! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week Cultivating Place kicks off December with a flourish in conversation with Teresa Sabankaya of the Santa Cruz-based Bonny Doon Garden Company and author of "The Posy Book – garden-inspired bouquets that tell a story" just in time for seasonal winter festivities and their greening and gifting. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Join us this week on Cultivating Place for our final episode in the Seed Change series. We are in conversation with Vivien Sansour, heart and head behind The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library aiming to revive and share forward Palestinian seed heritage and culture of care and gratitude. Vivien was born in Palestine and grew up in Bethlehem and then North Carolina. She writes: “The seed, the seed, the seed….for what is it but a continuation of ourselves? Aren’t we all seeds?" – Vivien Sansour Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, the third in our 4 part Seed Change series with Cheryl Birker, Seed Conservation Program Manager at California Botanic Garden and with whom we go even deeper into what it means to seed bank a biodiversity hotspot in our world. It’s all about the beauty in the tiniest of details. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we continue our Seed Change series with Naomi Fraga, research assistant professor of Botany at Claremont Graduate University and Director of Conservation Programs at the California Botanic Garden dedicated to conserving the rich biodiversity of the native plants of California through field research, seed banking, and education programs. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place we continue our Seed Change series - a nod to faith and a vote for the next growing season. We’re joined this week by Chris Bolden-Newsome and Owen Smith Taylor - of Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram's Garden and True Love Seed respectively. Farmers and culture keepers, the two protect and steward seed and seed stories - encouraging others to steward their own stories and their own seeds as well. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In this season of colliding urgencies and not infrequent dismay - the garden offers so many lessons. Among the largest of these, brought to you in the smallest of things, is the hope proffered by seeds. And seed keepers. To kick off a new series on seed keepers of the world, this week we revisit our conversation with the UK’s Clare Foster, Garden Editor of House & Garden, UK. A gardener, author, and seed-sower herself, Clare’s newest book (with co-author, with Sabina Rüber) is "The Flower Garden: How to Grow Flowers From Seed” (Laurence King, 2019). It’s fun, colorful, and easy - a vote for hope and the future. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by award winning landscape designer Judith Phillips of Albuquerque NM. Her Design Oasis, characterized by creative thinking, designing gardens, and growing plants born of her wider place in the high desert has been shifting ideas of beauty and meaning for other gardeners of the American Southwest since the 1980s. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place we speak with British gardener and psychiatrist/psychotherapist Sue Stuart-Smith, whose book, "The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature", and very explicitly of gardening, explores her many years of research and findings on the physiology of the brain and the creativity and connections cultivated in the brain when gardening. In this work “of science, insight, and anecdote,” Sue demonstrates that “our understanding of nature and its restorative powers is just beginning to flower.” Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we continue our exploration into creativity born of the garden –I share with you today a story and model for creativity coupled with kindness. On Cultivating Place, I talk a lot about gardens, gardeners, and gardens as intersectional agents and spaces of powerful potential & positive change in our world. While I see this as true in most of my interviews, this episode with the regenerative humans of the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz brings this truth to life more poignantly and tangibly than most. In July, thanks to the many efforts and encouragement of Homeless Garden Project Board Member Dana Rhine, I had the great pleasure of making a full-day field trip to the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz, California, where for 30 years a team of dedicated citizens and professionals have been putting the diverse lessons and heart of gardening to work to help offset the many challenges of homelessness in our world. John traveled with me and through the course of the day, we joined morning circle time with the staff and trainees, toured the current garden – full of flowers and fruit, migrating monarchs, seasonal vegetables and an abundance of fresh air, a stone’s throw from the ocean. I had the good fortune to speak with all the people there in the Homeless Garden Project working Farm that day – from long-time trainees to new ones - timidly, skeptically, hopefully - looking into the program; from the volunteer cook who every Tuesday brings the staff and trainees a morning snack and then prepares a hearty lunch for them to share together family-style, to the full -time year-round staff, to CSA shareholders – and you will hear a bit from all of them in this episode. Throughout, Executive Director Darrie Ganzhorn and others speak a lot about "structure” - and the symbolic importance of structure is not lost on me. Structure is simultaneously the form of a physical home, a container for and within our gardens, a scaffolding on which we try to build our days, our families, and our lives. The layers of language – such as the denotation and connotation of structure – comes up for me here. How important it is that we understand the impact of all of our words – how certain words or phrases, when we unpack them or really hear them – for instance the difference between hearing “homeless person” versus “person experiencing homelessness” - changes the power and the emphasis completely. It is never too late to listen to and hear our own word choices more clearly – how they confer dignity, respect, and equity, versus not doing any these things. How we tend our words is a direct manifestation of how we tend ourselves, our own gardens, and one another. The Homeless Garden Project is modeling structure and structural integrity - how we support, shelter, and hold each other up in the world. It is never too late to grow a better world. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we kick off October with a dive into creativity – the way gardeners harness it, riff off it, and share its results forward with the larger world – and I am so pleased that our first creative in this exploration is the potter Frances Palmer, a previous guest on the program, one of the 75 women featured in my book The Earth in Her Hands, and a fantastic inspiration for any gardener maker out there. In a world that needs a great deal from us right now, we can almost never go wrong by igniting our creativity. Frances is a gardener, a knitter, a cook, a bee-keeper, and a businesswoman. Her one of a kind hand made pottery is a joy to the eye, the hands, and the heart – as full of personality as it is functional and beloved around the world. Thirty years into her career, her first book – Frances Palmer: Life in the Studio inspiration and lessons on creativity publishes October 6th by Artisan Press. She joins me this week from her studio in Connecticut. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Camilla Jorvad is a photographer, a gardener, a mental health and rewilding habitat gardening advocate based on the Danish Island of Aero. Her home-farm shared with her husband and children is known as Sigridsminde – meaning in memory of Sigrid – the gardener who first established a garden on this coastal bluff before her father and mother-in-law took on its care, prior to Camilla and her family partnering with the land soon after the birth of their eldest child. The partnership led to a deeper understanding and measurement of health - physical and mental - for Camilla, the land, and her family of humans and more-than-humans. Listen in. It is a story of restoration, redemption and trusting the true nature of our places and our selves. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Most gardens, gardeners, and gardening seasons are deeply informed first and foremost by a deep love of PLANTS. Of space, and design, and color, and food, and refuge and beauty, YES, but for many of us it all starts with a love of plants. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by an international gardener, designer, and horticulturist Wambui Ippolito - tracing the history of our own plant love, and the legacies and deeply human histories of the plants we all love. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Dustin Gimbel is a landscape designer and large scale outdoor ceramic artist inspired by the botanical world and based in Southern California. In a new episode in our ongoing series about the art of the garden and art in the garden, I am pleased to welcome Dustin this week to share more about his journey working his way through school and some notable internships to this summer installing his first public exhibitions at the Sherman Library and Gardens in Corona Del Mar and the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek. Art mirrors nature is some interesting and unexpected ways! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In this very unusual back-to-school season here in the US, we’re joined this week by Julie Cerny a gardener, an outdoor enthusiast, and educator. Her new book, The Little Gardener: Helping Children Connect with the Natural World (out now from Princeton Architectural Press) provides some unusual and inspirational guidance for parents, grandparents, caregivers, and educators who want to help children explore the natural world through gardening. Part how-to, part teaching tool, and part inspiration, The Little Gardener shows gardeners of all ages how to envision and build their garden together by making the process an adventure to be treasured, with much to learn along the way. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place we’re focused on growing food and community when we’re joined by Patricia Spence, President and CEO of the Urban Farming Institute of Boston, working to grow more food, train more farmers, and build healthier communities everywhere. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Toni Gattone is a businesswoman, a master gardener, and a lifelong gardener of Italian descent. After struggling herself with a bad back, and the limitations this put on her as an active human and gardener, she began to research the idea of adaptive gardening. Based on all that she discovered and her own experiments and adaptations in her small Bay area garden that she shares with her husband, she wrote: “The Lifelong Gardener – Garden With Ease and Joy at Any Age” (Timber Press, 2019). In the late stages of our current growing season here in the Northern Hemisphere, and in my own mid-to-late middle age, I figure there is never a better time than now to learn more about adapting to the realities of where we are, who we are, and how to make the best of both. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Farmer Meg is an urban beekeeper turned flower and market grower turned farmer. Meg has been farming in NJ and NY city and state for almost a decade. Just over two years ago, she and her partner Neil migrated to upper Schoharie County NY to being to establish Meg’s dream homestead on a former dairy farm. Biscuitwood Farm grows cut flowers, raises egg-layers on pasture, breeds Red Wattle pigs, and has small-scale soap enterprise wit their dairy goats. She is instrumental to a regionally based collaborative known the 607 CSA, and she believes firmly in abundance, the generosity of the garden, and that collaborative growing is the future. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place we get a booster shot of energy and inspiration as we enter the dog days of summer when we’re joined by Colah B. Tawkin – the voice and vibrant life force and distinctive VOICE of the Black in the Garden podcast - where Black Culture Meets Horticulture. You will not want to miss her - listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Jasna Guy is an artist whose visionary and liminal work is based in close observation of the plants and pollinators – specifically bees – of her garden and natural environments. Her ethereal representations bring heightened understanding and awareness to the miraculous life processes - like bee and flower pollination and pollinator co-evolution and mutual interdependence - going on around us everyday everywhere. Listen in. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In the throes of high summer, Cultivating Place continues to explore the fruits of the imaginative nature of the garden. We begin a two-part series on visual artists deriving their inspiration from the garden and its diverse life, and going from there. Jennifer is joined this week by the Australian three-dimensional paper artist Colleen Southwell whose finely drawn, detailed, and designed compositions pull from the natural and the fantastical. Part herbarium or entomological specimen displays, part pure imagination, whimsy and fine, fine handwork. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

A good read often plumbs the depths of imagination, for Matthew Hall - gardener & researcher at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand – it’s the Imagination of Plants he’s interested in, especially how and why plants are or are not positioned as central characters in the most important cultural narratives and mythologies of societies across time and place. Matthew joins Cultivating Place this week to explore Botanical Mythology. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place we take a summer amble with British-based Californian Kathryn Aalto – a historian, designer, and writer whose most recent book Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks offers all of us some much needed outdoor adventure with some admirable women of words. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In honor of the Fourth of July, Cultivating Place is joined this week by the acclaimed writer and gardener Jamaica Kincaid, whose work "My Garden (Book)" published in the late 1990s, explores how the length and depth of human history - beautiful and terrible - is a narrative fully legible in our gardens and horticulture of today. As a citizen gardener, she sees potential redemption for humanity in kindness and in striving to honor one another the best we can - in our places, with our plants. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Amy Goldman is a gardener, author-artist, and longtime advocate for seed saving, plant breeding, and heirloom fruits and vegetables. Her mission has for many years been to celebrate and catalog the magnificent diversity of standard, open-pollinated, heirloom varieties, and their conservation. Her books include The Compleat Squash – A Passionate Growers Guide to Pumpkins, Squashes, and Gourds, and most recently The Melon, which will entice and educate, whether you are a passionate gardener, a locavore, or simply delight in the inherent beauty and evanescence of the fruits of the vine. Illustrated by Victor Schrager, and many years in the making, The Melon is a comprehensive and definitive work that includes portraits in words and photographs of 125 extraordinary varieties, expert advice on cultivation and seed saving, and delicious melon recipes. Amy Goldman’s mission is to celebrate, catalog, and conserve standard, open-pollinated fruit, and vegetable varieties. As we come back she shares more on how her newest book The Melon encourages everyone to grow, enjoy, save seed from and share forward the great diversity of melons and watermelons, plants whose ancient wild progenitors hail from Africa, India, and Persian regions and whose histories are intertwined with the people of these places and their diasporas across time and space. Listen In. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

Nadia Ruffin is an entomologist, gardener, and educator. She is the founder of Agricademy Inc and Urban Farm Sista based in Cincinnati, Ohio. A lover of bugs and all insects and life forms since she was very young, Nadia loves sharing this admiration and curiosity, with youth especially. In 2018 the Cincinnati City Council honored Nadia’s farming and agriculture initiatives, the primary focus of which is to share her knowledge and passion for the biological world and all that it offers to us in the way of endless and healthy wonder, food, beauty, and learning. It's National Pollinator Week and this week we revisit our 2019 conversation with Nadia to explore this wonder and this work. As a bonus - we talk about the importance of meeting and managing our own irrational fears. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

June is traditionally a month in which many, many weddings are celebrated with family, food, and FLOWERS. With many of these weddings on hold this year due to Covid-19, we catch up with floral creative Philippa Craddock to talk about the business of floristry, the sustainability of it on several levels, and to reminisce about the lovely florals - from epic arches to the most romantic of bouquets which Philippa designed for the Lovely Meghan Markle and her Prince Harry, now the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The world was watching this wedding for a variety of reasons, I was watching for the flowers and they did not disappoint. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Ross Gay is a gardener - he is also an award-winning poet and a professor. A founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a food justice and joy project, Ross joins Cultivating Place this day of Thanksgiving to share more about his garden life journey, the structure of care it represents, and the unabashed gratitude and delight it brings him daily. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Melanie Falick is a maker of many things by hand, and in her work from knitting to gardening, welding to baking, she explores the connection between what we do with our hands in our own lives and our quality of life and sense of wellbeing. In 2015, Melanie left her 15-year corporate career in the publishing world without a completely clear sense of what she would - or wanted to do- next. Her intuition told her that whatever it was, it would involve engagement with the handwork – knitting, sewing, time in the garden – that she loved, but that she had moved away from personal direct contact within her career. In the course of making many things following her “retirement" of sorts, it while crafting a simple folded paper box, a box of incredibly basic utility, that she had an epiphany: “in a circuitous way” in all her creative making, she was trying to connect to her own survival – and that impulse was tied inextricably to her own sense of self, capability, and connection to others – ancestors, descendants, community. In these past few months of shelter in place, I think many of us, male, female, old, and young across the globe, have had a renaissance in our own psyches of this same impulse. Melanie and I actually chatted in February, before the shut-down, which seems prescient somehow in hindsight, and I think speaks to the fact that this growing global dissatisfaction with what we have been told “success” is, has been in the making for a very long time. Enjoy this conversation about her newest book, “Making a Life, Working by Hand and Discovering the Life You Are Meant to Live” (Artisan Press, 2019), in which she explores how others have been manifesting this impulse and leading lives of great connection and meaning long before Covid-19, and how they might be role models for anyone of us in making our own lives. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Johanna Silver is a gardener, writer and editor, formerly the garden editor at Sunset Magazine and regular contributor to Martha Stewart Living, Better Homes & Gardens, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She is the author of The Bold Dry Garden, on the garden and legacy of famed California famed plantswoman Ruth Bancroft. This week she joins us to talk about her newest book: Growing Weed in the Garden, a No-Fuss, Seed-to-Stash Guide to Outdoor Cannabis Cultivation out now from Abrams Press. Cannabis has been legal for medicinal purposes in California since the late 1990s, and in late 2016, California voters approved the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, thereby legalizing the recreational use of cannabis. The use, sale, and possession of cannabis over .03% THC remains illegal under federal law, however. That said, according to a recent report on NPR: Thirty-three US states currently allow for some form of sale and consumption of marijuana. And of those, more than 20 states have designated the cannabis industry as essential during the coronavirus outbreak. Cannabis sativa is a plant which is equally loved and reviled, common and commonly misunderstood. As the rest of our warm season crops – tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and the like come online in the garden – this week we’re joined by Johanna to help us demystify this warm season crop and very specific Weed. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Fallon Shea is a self-described rose devotee and roseologist currently making her life with roses in Southern California as a grower, designer, artist, and writer. She says that roses found her when she was lost at the age of 19, “tricked her into gardening” then, and have kept her happily under their spell as their devoted student ever since from pruning 10,000 roses in the field, to savoring their tart hips, to incorporating all stages of them into her floral designs and all parts of them into her artwork. She joins us this week to talk about some specific roses she loves, general rose care, their enigmatic colors, and the magic of them in any diverse and lively garden. Join Cultivating Place this week for all this and more. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Cultivating Place kicks off the month of May - with two-episodes focused on ROSES – we start off this week before Mother’s Day here in the U.S., with a visit to David Austin Roses in conversation with Michael Marriott, senior rosarian and at David Austin for more than 35 years. He considers the rose among the most beloved of garden plants and as such a very conduit for awareness and care of gardens, plants, and our world more generally. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

Uli Lorimer is the director of Horticulture for the Native Plant Trust in Massachusetts. His work as a native plant and biodiversity advocate is informed by years of work in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Native Flora Garden, in the woodland garden at Wave Hill in the Bronx and even earlier at the US Botanic Garden. Uli and I met just after we recorded this conversation during the annual conference of the Ecological Landscape Alliance in Amherst Mass where I was the keynote speaker, and now these long weeks later Uli reports that the pandemic has not only brought people to gardening, but an increased interest in native plants, the climate, and an understanding that among what we deem essential at this time – biodiversity and a wholistic resilience are key. His is a garden life journey in which he navigates with plants as his landmarks and it is earth day every day - He joins Cultivating Place this week to share more. Listen In! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Rebecca Burgess is a gardener, weaver and natural dyer. She is the executive director of Fibershed, the chair of the Carbon Cycle Institute, and the author of two books - her newest is FIBERSHED: Growing a Movement of Farmers, Fashion Activists, and Makers for a New Textile Economy (Chelsea Green, 2019). She joins Cultivating Place this week to share more about her vision behind the cooperative, community-based Fibershed movement she is helping to grow for an innovative and integrated approach to textiles, our environments, and economies. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, a BEST OF in which we revisit our seedkeeping series. IN this one, we’re joined by plantswoman, seed advocate, farmer and author Ira Wallace of the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and the Heritage Harvest Festival in Charlottesville VA. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

For many, the orders to stay at home are also encouraging permission slips to GARDEN. On Cultivating Place this week, we are joined by Nicole Johnsey Burke of Gardenary.com, an online platform teaching and supporting people wishing to dive into new or expand existing Kitchen Gardens. The author of soon to be published Kitchen Garden Revival, and host of the Grow Your Self Podcast, Nicole is enthusiastically teaching people and showing people how to create gardens where once there were none - for food, for health, for joy. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

While we head into another month under social distancing and self-isolation restrictions in order to flatten the curve of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak, we close out our women’s history month interview conversation with Ayana Young founder and host a For The Wild Podcast and Projects. Her work and words remind us we are never in fact alone. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

So many people have reached out to express how the CP podcast is more important to them than ever. So even as this global crisis continues, so too Women’s History month on Cultivating Place continues. This week with Christin Geall, writer, floral designer, flower farmer, home gardener and author of Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Design, out this week from Princeton Architectural Press. There has never been a better time to be a gardener. Take Care of yourself and your communities, wash your hands, and keep gardening. Together – even distant – we grow. Listen in and share! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Women’s History month on Cultivating Place continues this week, knowing that radio and new voices are especially important to us all right now. Dr. Elaine Ingham is the founder of Soil Food Web Inc. An early researcher and articulator of the soil food web model, she brings us up to speed on things soil life. Hang in there and Join us! We are committed to being the encouraging and expanding voice in your ear as we all hang in there. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Women’s History month on Cultivating Place continues this week with Andrea DeLong-Amaya, Director of Horticulture at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin Texas. Two great women’s stories with plants in one! The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin is the botanic garden for the state of Texas. Andrea has been on for over 20 years and has more than 30 years of experience in horticulture, she guides 15 staff in the design and management of 9 acres of native gardens, 275 acres of natural areas and a native plant nursery. She teaches classes in native plant horticulture and writes and presents on her passion for the field widely. She spoke with us late last autumn to share more about the history and work of the center, including it being the legacy of another extraordinary woman, Lady Bird Johnson, and her own enthusiasm for this field of work. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

This week we wrap up our series on the healing power of gardens and kick off our Women’s History Month all at the same time. For every episode in March to celebrate the month, Cultivating Place will be highlighting one of the women in The Earth in her Hands, 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants, which officially published just two days ago on March 3, 2020! We start off with the work of herbalist and educator, Tiffany Freeman. Tiffany is a registered acupuncturist, a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, and a registered clinical herbalist, certified by the American Herbalist Guild, She is the co-founder and co-director of the Lodgepole School of Wholistic Studies. She joins us today from her home in Calgary. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we start to wind down our series on Healing Gardens and Therapeutic Landscape design, we’re joined by Matthew J. Wichrowski, MSW HTR, Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and Senior Horticultural Therapist at Rusk Rehabilitation at NYU Langone Health. A longtime educator and practitioner in the field of horticultural therapy. From acute care bedsides to locked ward psychiatric care, plants make everything better. Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week the Cultivating Place series on Healing Gardens dives into one of our most ancient healing plant allies – the Elder – it’s genus, its history, its flowers, and berries, with John Moody, father, homesteader, and author of The Elderberry Book. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Even as a girl growing up in Puerto Rico, Perla Sofía Curbelo recognized that the simple act of picking flowers for her mother to put out in their homemade everything more pleasant. This week, we continue our exploration of the healing and therapeutic effects of gardens, plants, and nature. We’re joined in this third conversation by Perla who recently received her Horticultural Therapy Certificate from the Chicago Botanic Garden and puts it to ever greater use in her homeland of Puerto Rico. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In our second episode in a series around the healing power of plants and gardens in our world, we get an overview of the professional field of Horticultural Therapy and Healing Garden Design on an institutional basis with one of the field’s leading spokeswomen and researchers, Dr. Naomi Sachs, join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we kick off a series on the Healing Power of Gardens, in the series we’ll visit with Dr. Naomi Sachs, of the Therapeutic Landscapes Network, with Perla Curbelo, a recent graduate of the Horticultural Therapy certification program at the Chicago Botanic Garden, with Iain Houghton, at the Chelsea Physic Garden, one of the oldest extant botanical and medicinal plant gardens in the UK (and world), and with Matt Wichrowski, a horticultural therapy clinician and educator in New York City. This week, we start off right where we are - in our own gardens, speaking with P. Annie Kirk about Sanctuary and Healing - beginning with ourselves. The whole world is in need of sanctuary and healing - in varying degrees of urgency and from varying kinds of wounds. Annie Kirk of Red Bird Restorative Gardens starts us off with a conversation about the transformative power of the garden, plants, and nature to offer us healing and health - starting in our own gardens, hearts, and minds. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on CP, we're emboldened to consider our strength and power in the garden and in life generally by Erinn Carter and Georgia Faye Hirsty, two of the co-founders of an organization known as Frailty Myths, based in Oakland, CA. Their mission is to reimagine femininity and build power by excusing ourselves from the implications, hobbles, and damage wrought by mainstream conceptions of what is naturally feminine or naturally masculine (the dominant ethos of what we know as "patriarchy” and as perpetuated by us all). At Frailty Myths, they instead model, ask, encourage us to bring our whole heartfelt power and selves into the work of Cultivating our Places - no matter if that is sailing, gardening, woodworking, or singing. In bringing our open hearts and minds and full power to any situation, we ensure that we are simultaneously cultivating safe and open space for us all. Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

January and mid-winter indeed feels poetic in its spareness, and while many poets come to mind, for me Emily Dickinson stands out for seasonality and abundance in spareness. In 2004 writer and gardener Marta McDowell published Emily Dickinson’s Gardens – a celebration of a poet and a gardener; Following up on new research and her own experience as Gardener-In Residence at the Emily Dickinson Museum, Marta updated her original work with Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life – The Plants and Places that Inspired the Iconic Poet, which was published in 2019. Marta joins us Cultivating Place this week to share more - listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

It's shaping up to be a big news year for Washington DC, so this week Cultivating Place heads to the capital, but we’re there to check in with the gardeners of the region. Kathy Jentz, AKA The Washington Gardener, is an avid plantswoman, and founder and editor of Washington Gardener magazine, serving Mid-Atlantic gardeners, celebrating 15 years of publication in 2020. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit WWW.cultivatingplace.com.

As we ring in the New Year of this New Decade with the power of 2020 ours for the making, this week we are welcoming gardener, naturalist, educator, husband, and lily-lover Joe Joe Clark. Born and raised Vallejo, California to a garden-loving mother, Joe Joe is a naturalist working on interpretation, public engagement and education, and nearly equal amounts of paperwork for the Napa County Open Space district taking him to both state and county parks in coastal Northern California. He joins us from his home garden to share more about the power of his love for nature - especially the lilies of the field - and the importance of nature literacy. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

From anecdotal and personal experiences, we know that many gardeners in the world are born of early childhood experiences, while I can’t get every child outside, I can conjure the magic of it things almost as powerfully - I can metaphorically feed children, sing to them, and take them on a field trip through the power of reading to them of all of these wonders and their immeasurable value complexity and beauty… this week on Cultivating Place, we explore the Growing Power of Children’s literature to prepare our seedlings of today for their actions of tomorrow. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Since time immemorial flowers have accompanied humans on our journeys – this week Cultivating Place welcomes the divine Amy Merrick, writer, florist, international traveler, teacher, and a perennial student of all that flowers offer to us in the way of wonder and learning. Her new book – On Flowers: Lessons from an Accidental Florist (Artisan Publishing, 2019) – is as humbly and accessibly luxurious as flowers themselves. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Ken Druse is a gardener and garden writer. This week on Cultivating Place Ken joins us to explore and revel in the scented Side of the garden - the topic of his 20th book The Scentual Garden, Exploring the World of Botanical Fragrance, out now. It’s perfect for winter dreaming, planning, and plotting. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Dr. Lauren E. Oakes is a conservation and adaptation scientist working to model and communicate how people can adapt at local levels to the GLOBAL climate crisis. Her book In Search of the Canary Tree: The Story of a Scientist, a Cypress and a Changing World is the chosen Book in Common for Chico and California State University, Chico this coming academic year. We revisit our BEST OF conversation with Lauren this week, sharing her journey story and other thoughts on resilience in our changing world, in advance of her appearing at CSU Chico this coming April. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Ross Gay is a gardener - he is also an award-winning poet and a professor. A founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a food justice and joy project, Ross joins Cultivating Place this day of Thanksgiving to share more about his garden life journey, the structure of care it represents, and the unabashed gratitude and delight it brings him daily. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week – heading swiftly into the winter holiday season good food cooking and baking and communing – Cultivating Place is joined by grow-your-own revolutionary, Brie Arthur – author of the Foodscape Revolution and Gardening with Grains. Her enthusiasm is catching – join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we’re settling into the flavors of the Autumn season – and the seasonings we turn to in cooler weather - headed toward the tastes of the winter holidays ahead. We’re joined in this by Sue Goetz, author of A Taste for Herbs. She explores with us how to start from our gardens, from the personality and chemistry of our herbs, and move from there to the deliciousness we want to evoke in the kitchen - rather than the other way around. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In honor of the one year anniversary of the Camp Fire, Cultivating Place is joined this week by Douglas Kent, author of Firescaping, and Calli-Jane DeAnda and Ben Hart of the Butte County Fire Safe Council to talk about the importance of gardening and gardeners modeling important land care and stewardship ethic in fire country. Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

From his "Growing with Plants” blog to his first book "Mastering the Art of Vegetable Growing”, which he researched, photographed and wrote – plantsman Matt Mattus is inspiring. He joins us this week on Cultivating Place to share more on the different twists, turns and fertile offshoots of his plant journey. We talk about his first book AND get some hints about his new book coming out soon on unusual selections for the flower garden too. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Misti Little is an environmental consultant working in GIS services. As a naturalist, gardener, explorer and fellow garden audio producer, she (and her garden) help us to map where we are – and how to see that more clearly – connecting the dots of ecosystems large and small, public and private, through watersheds and through-hikes right back to our own homes. Misti Joins Cultivating Place this week to share more - listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

Tucker Fitzpatrick is a home gardener who thinks a lot about how cultural norms and biases directly impact how and why we garden in interesting ways. A father, a lawyer, a gardener and a gardening culture observer, he joins us today from his home and garden in Southern California to share more about his gardening journey and his curiosity and observations on his garden and the broader 'gardening culture.’ Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Irish plantswoman Mary Reynolds has cultivated a deep love of her place in the mountains of Wicklow, Ireland - in all its complexity and mystery. As a plantswoman and guardian/gardener - she listens to her place and works in partnership with her place to move us all forward towards a better world. Mary is a nature activist, a self-described reformed Landscape Designer, the author of "The Garden Awakening", and the inspiration behind the 2015 movie Dare to be Wild – Cultivating Place revisits this BEST OF episode in celebration of NSPR’s Fall Membership Drive. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week Cultivating Place is joined by award winning architect David Abelow. David asks us look at our gardens from the inside out and his exploration of our gardens as the “first next room” out of every door and window gets us re-viewing what our gardens are and can be. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

"Loss is the twin of love" – so writes Margaret Renkl in her human and moving memoir of place, plants, people and life entitled "Late Migrations – A Natural History of Love and Loss". Margaret is a gardener, an observer, a contributing writer at the New York Times, and she joins Cultivating Place this week from her home in Tennessee. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Dean Kuipers has studied and written about the field of environmental politics and the human-nature relationship for decades. His most recent book "The Deer Camp" is a memoir of both place and people - recounting how restoring a piece of land with his father and his brothers also restored their family bonds and abiding love. He joins Cultivating Place this week to share more - LISTEN IN! To read more and see many photos, please go to www.Cultivatingplace.com Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Baylor Chapman loves plants and she’s spent a good part of her career helping people to learn about, see, love and care for plants wherever people might need them – in their homes, offices, work spaces, apartments. She believes they make us healthier, happier, better people and I agree. As students return to dorms and workers return to offices post summer – Baylor joins Cultivating Place this week to encourage us to tend toward more green – stay with us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Dr. Lauren E. Oakes is a conservation and adaptation scientist working to model and communicate how people can adapt at local levels to the GLOBAL climate crisis. Her book In Search of the Canary Tree: the Story of a Scientist, a Cypress and a Changing World is the chosen Book in Common for Chico and California State University, Chico this coming academic year. Lauren joins Cultivating Place this week to share her journey story and other thoughts on resilience in our changing world. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we head into the month of September, and we tend toward the Autumnal Equinox later in the month, I am reminded of this being one of the best seed seasons in our gardens and in our wildlands. Ecosystems everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere are reminded by the light of the need to set seed before growing season’s end. I thought this was a perfect moment to return to one of the episodes from our series last year entitled Seeds of September. Today Cultivating Place revisits our conversation with SeedKeeper, Indigenous woman, mother, writer and Seed Rematriator, Rowen White. Rowen is the founder of Sierra Seeds, the chair of Seed Savers Exchange, and an active member of the Indigenous Seed Keeper Network. Sierra Seeds is a small, regional seed and seed stewardship cooperative based in Nevada County, California. Listen in for more! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Alpine and Steppe plants are uniquely interesting individuals and communities of plants that thrive in extreme conditions of high elevations and dry locations around the globe. This week on Cultivating Place, we head to high ground with Mike Kintgen, Curator of Alpine Plants at the Denver Botanic Gardens in Denver CO and member of the American Penstemon Society to learn more about these charismatic plant communities. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

On Cultivating Place this week, we speak with two Landscape Architects who came together to create and offer out to the gardening world beautiful, functional gardens that are inspired, interesting, innovative and accessible to all. Meg Herndon and Sandra Nam Cioffi share more about the concept behind their Plant Me a Rainbow, based on this garden life as a crucible in which your own values become clear, these two women created a plan to help more people create richly flowering gardens. Starting with mostly native plants suited for climates and soils of the Northeast, these gardens have as their foundation principles applicable no matter where you garden. Including really interesting correlations with the age old art and science of perfumery. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

David Newsom is a filmmaker, storyteller, and outdoorsman. But when his daughter was born he realized he wanted to bring her butterflies, bees and all the rich diversity of the world, and so he became a gardener to a wild backyard. That very human impulse led to his founding of the Wild Yards Project – a non profit organization working to encourage and support the creation of native plant habitat gardens through audio visual stories of native plant visionaries and webbuilding. He shares more on cultivating place this week. Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we dive deep into a conversation on being more observant in our places with historic preservationist Courtney Allen, Director of Public Programs at the Native Plant Trust. Together we explore all that we can learn from really seeing and READING our landscapes: lessons and insights on history, culture, climate, integrity, humility, and accountability are all there. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As gardeners we are many things, among these we are place makers. What does it mean to be a placemaker – what is learned, what is lost, what is gained in the making of any place. This week on Cultivating Place we consider the nature and meaning of placemaking with mother, gardener, and spiritual memoirist Christie Purifoy. She lives and gardens with her husband and four children at Maplehurst, a Victorian red brick farmhouse in southeastern Pennsylvania. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Abra Lee is a public horticulture leader in the making. From rural roots in Georgia, to a passion for pop music and style, she sees the interweaving of horticulture and our everyday lives as a path to increasing horticulture’s relevance and importance for everyone. An advocate for Planting Your Truth – she shares more on Cultivating Place this week. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

There are few things so affirming as growing plants from seed, this week on Cultivating Place, we talk about the adventures of growing flowers from seed with Clare Foster, Garden Editor of House & Garden, UK. A gardener, author, and seed-sower herself, Clare’s newest book (with co-author, with Sabina Rüber) is "The Flower Garden: How to Grow Flowers From Seed” (Laurence King, 2019). It’s fun, colorful, and easy! Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

On this Fourth of July – Cultivating Place is pleased to be in conversation with Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge And The Teachings Of Plants.” Together we explore the interrelationship between gardening and citizenship. She states: "I think that is our deepest longing - to belong to each other and to belong to this larger community of life and for me this notion of tending the garden at all the scales we’ve been implying here is a powerful way to belong." Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! You can find it at cultivatingplace.com. We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place.

As summer heats us up and slows us down, the garden and in particular the edible garden is front and center. This week Cultivating Place is joined by Lauri Kranz, of Edible Gardens LA conversing about how growing your own food is one of the most empowering things you’ll ever do. Stay With us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Robert Hanss and his daughter Catherine are a father-daughter duo in the Northeast working together to create and care for gardens and horticulture traditions and relationships that will last for generations to come. In this week following Father’s Day, and day before the Summer Solstice, they join us to talk about the changing nature of horticultural business models and the lasting legacy of family – landscapes included. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Nadia Ruffin is an entomologist, gardener and educator. She is the founder of Agricademy Inc, and Urban Farm Sista based in Cincinnati, Ohio. A lover of bugs and all life forms since very young herself, Nadia loves sharing this admiration and curiosity, with youth especially. In 2018 the Cincinnati City Council honored Nadia’s farming and agriculture initiatives, the primary focus of which is to share her knowledge and passion for the biological world and all that it offers to us in the way of endless and healthy wonder, food, beauty, and learning. In preparation for National Pollinator Week coming up next week, we speak with Nadia this week and explore this wonder, this work, as well as how and why we could all try to meet and manage our own fears. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Soul Fire Farm is a working farm in upstate New York. Co-founded by Leah Penniman, the farm and all its work is committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system. Leah is also the author of “Farming While Black,” in which she documents her work and passion for black and brown people coming back into healthy relationship with land and good food. As we enter the month of June, graduations, weddings and easing into summer, we revisit our conversation with the inspirational Leah Penniman On Cultivating Place this week. Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

For many gardeners, Margaret Roach will need no introduction. Longtime Garden Editor of Martha Stewart Living and Editorial Director of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Margaret is the author of several well-known gardening books and the host of the gardening website and podcast A Way To Garden. Her first book also titled A Way To Garden has been updated and re-issued in honor of its 21st Birthday. Margaret joins Cultivating Place this week to share more about her garden way. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In a variation on the Dispatches from the Home Garden series, this week we enjoy a Dispatches from the Home Gardener and Plantsperson. Self-described Happy Wanderer, plantsman Bob Hyland of Hyland Garden design currently of Portland Oregon has lived and worked at some of the most prestigious horticultural institutions in the U.S. Along with his partner, Andrew, he founded and ran a successful specialty nursery in upstate New York, and he has served on horticultural boards around the country throughout his more than 40 year career in this work. Currently living and gardening with Andrew in Portland, Oregon, Bob is owner of Hyland Garden Design and the seasonal storefront Contained Exuberance in Portland, and he joins us today to share stories of the life of a plantsperson – a state of body and mind that is fully integrated in all that Bob loves and does. He shares with us today his insights and experiences as a life-long home gardener and a dedicated career professional helping to move the needle on how horticulture is perceived, practiced and appreciated/understood in our world these last 40 years. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

The best public gardens are in fact community gardens at some level, this week on Cultivating Place we’re speaking with gardeners from New York City’s Borough of Brooklyn where for 25 years the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens has hosted the Greenest Block in Brooklyn competition. Promoting streetscape gardening, tree stewardship, and community development in New York’s borough of Brooklyn through block and merchant associations and other groups – this is gardening as community activism of the highest order. Join us to hear more about this Greening Up. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

LIFE FORCE: In honor of mother’s day here in the US this coming weekend, we’re joined by artist, floral designer, textile designer and all around creative Louesa Roebuck, co-author of the beautiful book Foraged Flora – A year of Gathering and Arranging Wild Plants And Flowers - exploring the life force to be found in our mothers - biological and earthly. Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

TRUTH, BEAUTY, CHAOS & PLANTS - May Day is upon us and we celebrate in conversation with Australian gardener and writer - Georgina Reid. Based in Australia, her work under the name of The Planthunter finds truth beauty chaos and what it is to live an important life – in constant relationship with Plants. Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Irish plantswoman Mary Reynolds has cultivated a deep love of her place in the mountains of Wicklow, Ireland - in all its complexity and mystery. As a plantswoman and guardian/gardener - she listens to her place, and works in partnership with her place to move us all forward towards a better world. Mary is a nature activist, a self-described reformed Landscape Designer, the author of "The Garden Awakening", and the inspiration behind the 2015 movie Dare to be Wild – she joins Cultivating Place this week in an extended celebration of Earth Day, and our bonus Habitat Garden Series Episode #6. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. TAGS:

In our fifth episode in our five part series on our gardens as habitat and we gardeners as powerful land stewards and biodiversity protectors, we visit a remarkable public garden in California during California Native Plant Week. The Nature Gardens at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County are testament to just how much one garden can do to turn back time and help restore habitat even in downtown LA where once a parking lot sat barren and overheated. We’re joined today by native plant expert and Horticulturist Carol Bornstein, Director of the Nature Gardens, and by Lila Higgins, Senior Manager of Community Science there. They will bring us up to speed on what the Nature Gardens and the habitat they provide can offer to us all. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Hummingbirds are a beloved and charismatic creature of the Americas, the more than 350 species of which have coevolved with the flora of the Americas for millions of years. Cultivating Place is joined in our ongoing discussion of our gardens as important refuge habitats by Dr. Susan Wethington, research scientist, Program Developer, and Executive Director of the Hummingbird Monitoring Network. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In this our third in a five part series, on our gardens as important habitat links for the wildlife of our regions we’re joined by Horticulturist Christine Nye of Chicago’s historic – and state of the art 21st century - lakeside Shedd Aquarium. Christine’s visionary gardens there reminds us that the “healthy habitat” of our gardens expansively includes the fish in our waters and the bird’s in our skies. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In 2018, scientists reported dramatic losses in populations of one of North America’s most charismatic insects, the Monarch butterfly, with an estimated 14.8 percent decline of Eastern Monarchs and a precipitous 86% percent 1-year decline in Western Monarchs. While Monarchs are known for seasonal fluctuations in their numbers, this week we speak with Monarch researcher Dr. Anurag Agrawal of Cornell University to learn more. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

The news goes from bad to worse when we’re talking about biodiversity, insect declines and habitat loss in our world. This week we kick off an all new five-week curated series on the critically important habitat our gardens provide - what it means, what it looks like, how we can improve it – we start with an overview in conversation with with Scott Black, and by Phyllis Stiles of the Xerces Society for invertebrate conservation and their bee city initiative. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Spring is right around the corner and Spring Break Season is here – have you been outside lately? Have you been outside to play? Our guests this week on Cultivating Place are Amanda Thomsen of Kiss My Aster and Backyard Adventure, and Nancy Striniste of Nature Play At Home. They both remind us of the health and wellbeing involved in the activity of going outside to play. Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

On Cultivating Place this week – we’re joined by Pam Penick of the garden blog Digging, and founder of the Garden Bloggers Fling, together with Judy Seaborn co-owner of Botanical Interest Seeds in Denver, Co and organizer of this year’s Fling. We explore the intimacy and generosity of Gardeners - specifically garden bloggers - when they gather. The Garden Bloggers Fling has been gathering since 2008 and this year it meets to share knowledge and joy in Denver, Colorado in June. Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Working to ensure a bright and just future for U.S. Agriculture – that’s the work of the The National Young Farmers coalition whose advocacy, trainings and PODCAST are educations in themselves. Cultivating Place is in conversation this week with Lindsey Lusher Shute, Executive Director of the coalition and a vibrant young, independent farmer and gardener herself. Join us – Thursday at 10 am, Sunday at 9 here on www.mynspr.org. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Home of the famed spring plant sale HORTLANDIA, The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon is a thriving community of gardeners and Hort Heads who offer year round, life long learning and plant nerd opportunities. Cultivating Place is joined this week by Nancy Goldman of the HPSO to continue our exploration of the different ways in which we gardeners gather, learn and grow together. There’s always more to learn - Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Gardeners and naturalists are remarkably ardent self-directed, life-long learners and doers. And the winter season is well-adapted to gardeners’ continuing education and community building, this week we’re joined by Louis Bauer of Wave Hill a New York Public Garden and Cultural Center. Their annual 3 part winter lecture series is under way now. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

As an early Valentine to this garden life and plant loving community, Cultivating Place offers out a conversation with Melina Sempill Watts, author of Tree – a labor of audacity and arborphilia, Tree invites us to remain wide open, to listen and absorb what is shared with us, and thereby see the truth, beauty, and meaning in other being's existence. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Just three months since California’s November 2018 Fires made global headlines, the great winter greening of our state is underway and with it the urge to GROW - in humans as in plants. On the opposite side of the globe from us are holding their breath for the first rains of late autumn and an end to their annual fire season. Fire is fact of life – this week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Julie Evens,Vegetation Specialist and Greg Suba, Conservation Director with expertise in forestry management and fire, both of the California Native Plant Society to explore facts about fire and fire recovery. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Danger Ahead: Home gardener and garden blogger Loree Bohl loves a garden with stand-out foliage and bold form. But pay attention - it can be dangerous out there! Loree writes: "Nice plants are boring – my love is for plants that can hurt you. Agave, yucca, anything with a spike or spur!” This week on Cultivating Place, the next in our series of Dispatches from the Home Garden. Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place: http://bit.ly/2TgRFbQ We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

For Sara Bir – food librarian, forager, chef and author – fruit are sweet, delicious, sexy and tactile – but every bit as important – they among her currency of memory. Sara, whose new book The Fruit Forager’s Companion is out now from Chelsea Green, joins Cultivating Place to share her fruit foraging philosophy and practice. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Plants are all around us, and wherever there are plants, there are likely to be botanists at work trying to study, know and understand them better for us all. This week on Cultivating Place, botanist Linnea Hanson joins us to talk about the life of a botanist and the upcoming Northern California Botanist Symposium taking place in Chico Jan 14 – 16. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

As an exercise in intimacy for the New Year – this week on Cultivating Place, we visit an artistic and botanical project in South Africa known as Turning Into Flowers, which strives to combine a wide variety of cultural perspectives to create a new relationship between human and plant communities. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Some Floral tete a tete fun visits Cultivating Place this week just in time for the New Year. Josh Werber – founder of Floral Tete a Tete, a creative journey that began with a challenge to create an artistic floral headpiece every week for a year - three years ago now. The florals are really fun and the weekly practice led Josh to the heart of his creative inquiry. Fun and Creative Practice for the New Year Ahead. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Recalibrating our nervous systems and the art of seasonal, local floral design is what we’re exploring On CP this week with Max Gill, floral designer perhaps best known for his weekly floral artistry at Chez Panisse in Berkeley California. On the eve of the Winter Solstice, Max is inspiring and instructional for us all this holiday season. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In constant conversation with her home garden, our guest this week on Cultivating Place is committed to both the listening and the speaking roles. In this newest episode in our occasional series, Dispatches from the Home Garden, Ilene Flax of Boulder, Colorado shares how she visits with her plants while watering them, and how she is grieving the impending loss of her beloved Ash trees to the Emerald Ash borer. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place by heading to www.cultivatingplace.com. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Did you say you needed a good Garden Book Recommendation?! The holidays and end of year are upon us – and with them, all those lists. Things to do, food to cook, intentions to make, gifts to consider. To help in your deliberations, this week, I’ve gathered a handful of gardeners from ranging interests and locales to offer some thoughts on good books that catch their eyes and imaginations this season. Join Yolanda Burrell, owner of Pollinate Farm and Garden in Oakland, CA; Lorene Edwards Forkner, Editor of Pacific Horticulture magazine and based in Seattle WA; And Pen Pender, Home Gardener, bee-keeper, baker, and avid garden book reader in Mt. Macedon Australia for a round table discussion of good garden books we love now (and some of which we loved for a while now)! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place by visiting www.culitvatingplace.com. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Do you ever stop to wonder where your garden tools came from? The history behind plant and garden trends or techniques? Gardens and garden history are microsms of world history and every story illuminates the larger course of humanity. In her new book "The Compendium of Amazing Gardening Innovations," Abigail Willis highlights 50 important gardening innovation. Host Jennifer Jewell also share her reflections on the innovations and adaptations put to work in states of emergency such as her region continues to face in the aftermath and long road to regeneration following the #CampFire. Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place by visiting www.culitvatingplace.com. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In the wake, and still the fury of the #CAMPFIRE here in Northern California - we lean into some escapism on this long weekend of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Last week we prepared ourselves for the season of gratitude and this week we here in the U.S. lean into the long Thanksgiving Holiday weekend with an aspirational armchair tour of inspirational new gardens around the world. We’re joined with horticulturist and longtime public garden administrator, Chris Woods sharing with us about his new book: GardenLust. Join us.

This week on Cultivating Place, we revisit our Gratitude Special of last year - celebrating this season of harvest, of taking stock, of giving back, of deep GRATITUDE and of preparing for the restorative dark of winter ahead. Our central conversation is with earth artist Day Schildkret, who makes meaning and beauty with his daily practice, and now global outreach and book known as Morning Altars. Woven throughout the episode are gardeners from around the world sharing with us what gratitude in the garden looks like to them. It’s incredibly painful again to write this week - one week since the #CAMPFIRE of California broke out and swept across (so far) 148,000 acres of this beautiful landscape of the California Floristic Region, close to 10,000 human homes destroyed, hundreds of businesses, at least three nurseries destroyed or damaged, the members of several dedicated garden clubs and master gardener groups profoundly impacted. And that's just what we know as of today. I know that the fires continue south of here, ravaging those landscapes. I recognize that there's loss, devastation, and tragedy of all scales around our globe daily - today my heart is heavy here, in my home - home of the Maidu, Wintu, Concow and other indigenous peoples, home of so many endemic and native plant and animals friends and lives held dear, home to me and my family for 11 years now. Several weeks ago now Sarah and I determined to revisit our Gratitude Special from 2017 this week, in part to prepare ourselves for this traditional season of harvest and thanksgiving and in part to celebrate the publication of Day Schildkret's new book Morning Altars. Which is well worth celebrating. It did not of course occur to us that this episode would air in this time of chaos and loss. And yet it did. While for some the storylines might feel too soon, too raw, to hard to hear - I hope for others it hold seeds of hope and possibility for the next season of growth. While the landscape and nature all around us in the midst of natural disaster might not seem like a source of solace, might instead seem like causes for fear, the words of Leah Penniman of several weeks ago come back to me: "While the land might be the scene of the crime, the land itself is NOT the crime." While she was of course speaking to Black and Brown farmers and cultivators, reminding them of their rightful, beautiful, and dignified reciprocal and ancient relationship to the land - I would offer her thought out as a seed of hope for all gardeners in my region for whom gardening, relationship, and pleasure from their scarred landscape might seem distant right now. While so much is being done in the here and now for immediate needs of people affected by this disaster - my thoughts are toward the many dedicated and passionate gardeners in our area and all that they’ve lost. Losses like these will come into clearer focus as time goes on and be very painful, and yet might also seem insignificant to these gardeners in the face of everything. I want you gardeners to know that you are seen and supported, and that the gardening community wants to help your and your important gardening passions as they rebuild. Stay tuned for support efforts in the works and coming soon. I am grateful to be here with you in community, Love, Jennifer

In this week after All Hallow eve, Day of the Dead, Samhain, All Saints Day, and All Soul’s day – I thought – let’s visit a garden for our ancestors. This week we head East, to hear about a renovation project of the Asa Gray Garden at the historic Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts. No ghosts, but a good story. Join us. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place by heading to cultivatingplace.com. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Soul Fire Farm is a working farm in upstate New York committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system, co-founded by Leah Penniman. Leah is also the author of Farming While Black, documenting her work and passion for black and brown people coming back into healthy relationship with land and good food, which is out on shelves this week. The inspirational Leah Penniman shares more with Cultivating Place this week. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place by making a donation at cultivatingplace.com. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more conversations like this one with Leah Penniman. For photos of Leah and Soul Fire Farm visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

"Our craving to connect with nature continues to be the perfect foil for the magic of the human imagination," writes photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo. This week Cultivating Place wraps up "Artober" with Minneapolis based 3-dimensional paper artist Ann Wood, of Woodlucker Studios, and a revisit to a conversation with Vietnamese-born, New York-based artist and writer Ngoc Minh Ngo, who spoke to us about her book: "In Bloom: Creating and Living with Flowers," a collection of 11 portraits of artists inspired by the natural world. These two artists portray beautifully the endless creativity of botanical artistry. Join us! In case you didn't hear, the Cultivating Place team now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place by donating to the podcast at cultivatingplace.com. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

There’s an ancient association between the botanical world and the inspiration it provides to artists of all kinds. For our Botanical Artistry series part three, we meet Julia Lucey, whose painterly aquatint etching collage pieces evocatively depict the rich personalities of native flora and fauna. Join us! In case you didn't hear, the Cultivating Place team now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening as over the years we've discussed expanding our views on the powerful nature of gardens, plants, and gardeners as intersectional spaces and agents of change for the better in our world. We hope you'll support Cultivating Place by hitting the donate button at www.cultivatingplace.com and we can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. You can also find photos of Julia's work at cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

There’s an ancient association between the botanical world and the inspiration it provides to artists of all kinds. For our Botanical Artistry series part two, we meet Obi Kaufmann – author and artist of The California Field Atlas – he sometimes calls it a family album of his lifelong relationship with the physical being we know as California. Join us! In case you didn't hear, the Cultivating Place team is rolling out its first campaign to create sustainable funding for the production of Cultivating Place going into the future! We thank you so much for listening as over the years we've discussed expanding our views on the powerful nature of gardens, plants, and gardeners as intersectional spaces and agents of change for the better in our world. And for those of you who choose to be one of the first to monetarily support Cultivating Place - we can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. To give your support - head to cultivatingplace.com. There you'll also find photos of today's episode. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

There’s an ancient association between the botanical world and art inspired by it. This week on Cultivating Place, we kick off a four-part series in which we hear about the process, purpose and passions of five different artists all expressing their love for plants through their artistry. Today we hear from the bold and the heroic when we’re joined by botanical illustrator Kate Blairstone of Portland, Oregon, followed by a conversation with international urban muralist, Mona Caron. Join us. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, our final in the Seeds of September series we're joined by Matthew Benson of Stonegate Farm in New York's Hudson Valley, where he is his very own, very small agricultural district sowing seeds to grow other growers. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, the third installment in the Seeds of September four part series– we’re joined by Rowen White, founder of Sierra Seeds a seed and seed advocacy cooperative in Nevada County, Calif. Rowen, a Mohawk woman who serves on the Indigenous Seed Keeper’s Network and is current chair of Seed Savers Exchange, shares with us her love, purpose and poetry of seed stewardship. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, the second installment in the Seeds of September four part series – when we’re joined by plantswoman, seed advocate, farmer and author Ira Wallace of the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and the Heritage Harvest Festival in Charlottesville, VA Sept 20 – 22. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Welcome to The Seeds of September – this week on Cultivating Place we kick off our four-part series in conversation with Jere Gettle of Baker Creek Seeds, and more from the Organic Seed Alliance and Redwood Seeds. I think you’re going to love it! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

They are in your garden by the billions, they are in your food, in your house, and all over your skin. They partner us in all we do and they make all that we do well possible to start with. This week on Cultivating Place we revisit a conversation with science and food writer Eugenia Bone to talk more about her own foray into better understanding the world of the amazing and powerful world of Microbia. It’s a focus that is expanding for us all. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

The right tools can make all the difference in our lives and in our work. This is as true in gardening as in all other aspects of life. This week on Cultivating Place we revisit a conversation with Dorian Winslow, president of Womanswork. Almost 33 years ago now, Womanswork introduced the first work and garden gloves designed specifically for women. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, we spend a little time revisiting our conversation exploring and appreciating the many gifts of darkness with the International Dark-Sky Association. This conversation is from December and the season of Winter Solstice, but I really wanted to revisit it now – in the season not too far past the summer solstice. The nights are short (but lengthening now) and they are warm and we have a tendency to want to stay up and out later than we do in winter. The summer stars, the summer moon, the meteor showers – they beckon us to come outside as much as our morning flowers. Join us to listen to the conversation with Keith Ashley and Amanda Gormley of the International Dark-Sky Association, two passionate people within a global organization working to protect natural darkness as the precious natural resource it is. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, a best of conversation with a home gardener who has moved not just gardens, but continents and hemispheres. As we just reached the height of sunlight with our summer solstice, she eased into her winter. She shares a gardening story of learning, community and adaptability. Pen Pender is a gardener, mother, wife, voracious reader, community activist, bee keeper, cook and novice potter living near Mt. Macedon in Victoria, Australia. While I might never see kangaroos in my garden, and she may never hear the sound of a congregation of acorn woodpeckers, we are still gardening together in some sense. As she digs in and looks appreciatively up at winter over there, I dig in and look up in anticipation of a long hot summer over here. Pen shares her story of gardening under Australian skies. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Leslie Bennett is a garden designer of both English and Jamaican descent working out of Oakland, CA. With a Jamaican-born husband, a two year old son, and knowledgeable, passionate views about the importance of cultural heritage, on cultivating Place this week, Leslie shares her journey navigating the marriage of beauty, function, cultural property and the radical activism of gardening. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

The garden is a full contact playground engaging us at all levels: We can hear, we can taste, we can see and smell - touch and feel. Tovah Martin is gardener and garden writer who explores the truth and the manifold joys of this truth in her new book “The Garden in Every Sense and Season” out now from Timber Press. Tovah joins us this week on Cultivating Place to share more. Listen in! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

The New England Wild Flower Society is one of the oldest native plant conservation organizations in the country and represents the New England states. Their new book Native Plants for the New England Gardens is a perfect reference for their ecological and pollinator garden workshops being held across New England this summer. On Cultivating Place this week, we learn more. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In May of this year, the gardening world – specifically the ecologically based gardening world – lost one of it’s great leaders, Beth Chatto. This August her gardens and educational trust are hosting a symposium to honor her life and her work. On Cultivating Place this week we hear more about the woman and her legacy – join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week we’re joined by two native plantspeople – Julie Nelson and Michael Kauffmann - to delve into the unsettling case of the poached Dudleya this last year here in California – join us as we explore the interesting, sometimes bothersome issues an incident like this brings up for us gardeners. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In preparation for the 4th of July holiday, this week we visit our nation’s capital and the U.S. Botanic Garden. We’re joined by Devin Dotson, exhibits specialist and Nekisha Durrett, a featured artist in an epic summer mural exhibit at the Gardens - join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

On Cultivating Place today we celebrate National Pollinator Week in the US when we’re joined by British biologist, conservationist and Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex in England, Dave Goulson. A gardener and bumblebee expert, Dave is the founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust dedicated to growing the awareness and appreciation for the life and importance of the bumblebees - and all insects of our world - join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

It is now officially summer vacation for most public school districts in the US. Today, Cultivating Place takes a little field trip to visit Sacramento high school teacher Kevin Jordan’s garden program which adds fresh air and fresh thinking in the classroom and out, in all weather and all seasons. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In the global gardening world, Piet Oudolf is synonymous with a naturalistic planting style - rich in sweeps of grouped flowering perennials (often North American wildflower and prairie plants) and characterized by dramatic seasonal dynamics and ecological grounding . A new film "Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf" opens in New York this month celebrating this man and his work. On Cultivating Place this week, we learn more when we’re joined by filmmaker Thomas Piper. Join us. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word Humane as this: Being characterized by consideration of other, compassionate. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Nancy Lawson author of – The Humane Gardener, Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Entryways of Civility, Pathways of Kindness: A Reflection and Social Justice Garden on the Campus of Southern Connecticut University in New Haven, CT. Originally conceived to celebrate the lives and lights of four women Alumnae of Southern Connecticut State University who were killed while trying to protect the students in their care during the course of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT in 2012. In honor of the intentions of the upcoming Memorial Day weekend and the power of gardens to make the world a better place, we hear more about this new and powerful garden on Cultivating Place this week. Join us. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Unprecedented – Never to Happen Again. This Zen idiom refers specifically to the transient nature of time and each and every moment no matter how seemingly mundane. This sacredness in the everyday is at the heart of our Dispatches from the Home Garden this week when we visit an American tea garden in Tivoli, New York. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Art in the garden, art from the Garden – these are concepts familiar to most gardeners and yet for many of us also perhaps still largely unplumbed. This week, we visit with Iranian-American artist and plant person, Melody Overstreet to speak more about the culture of plant and land based art and the crafting of pigments, inks, dyes and watercolors. Melody shares her cultural, artistic and plant based journey with grace and in a way that interweaves her art with her world view and ethics. Melody will be on the campus of California State University Chico on Saturday May 26th to teach a workshop on naturally crafted, locally sourced pigments for the Friends of the Chico State Herbarium. Link to registration information is at cultivatingplace.com. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

They are in your garden by the billions, they are in your food, in your house, and all over your skin. They partner us in all we do and they make all that we do well possible to start with. Listen in to this week's Cultivating Place, when we’re joined by science and food writer Eugenia Bone to talk more about her own foray into better understanding the world of the amazing and powerful world of Microbia. It’s a focus that is expanding for us all. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

The second best time to become a gardener and nature lover is right now. The first best time, is as a child. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Nora McDonald and Katherine Somerville of the American Horticultural Society and by Fiona Doherty of Cornell University’s Horticulture Department and Garden Education. They talk with us about the history, impact of hopes of the American Horticultural Society’s Children & Youth Garden Symposium. This year’s symposium is being held in July at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Happy California Native Plant Week! The California Floristic Province is home to on the order of 6,500 native plant species and there are those among us who love and want to ensure the long life of the genetics and habitats of every single one. Today, in celebration of California Native Plant Week, we’re hearing from a selection of those voices, including Native Plant Home Gardener Vincent Bellino. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

On April 13th, Statesman and third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, would be 275 years old. He was also an avid and curious and acquisitive gardener and plant lover. His historic home and garden, Monticello, is an UNESCO Heritage sight, and Jefferson began designing and building Monticello at just 26 years old. With Virginia’s Historic Garden week just around the corner on April 21st - 28th, we’re joined this week on Cultivating Place by two members of Monticello’s horticultural staff, Peggy Cornett, curator of plants and Eleanor Gould, curator of gardens. We’ll explore the legacy of the gardens in all their complexity, depth and scope. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Grow what you love, it’s advice we’re given early in our gardening adventures as to how to choose what to plant, to tend and to pray over. Grow the food you love to eat, grow the flowers you love to look at or smell, grow the tree whose canopy you’d like to rest beneath. "Grow what you love" is also the title of Emily Murphy’s new book. A Northern Californian gardener, mother, educator and optimist – Emily’s my guest on Cultivating Place this week. Join us. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Have you ever thought: that is just what the mountains taste like? That is just what the forest or the ocean must taste like? For wildcrafter Pascal Baudar, author of The New Wildcrafted Cuisine and The Wildcrafting Brewer, from Chelsea Green Publishing, what his place tastes like in a specific season is at the heart of his food and garden. Baudar works as a wild-food researcher, wild brewer, and instructor in traditional food preservation techniques. Over the years, through his weekly classes and seminars, he has introduced thousands of home cooks, local chefs, and foodies to the flavors offered by their wild landscapes. In 2014, Baudar was named one of the 25 most influential local tastemakers by Los Angeles Magazine, and in 2017 his instructional programs, taught through Urban Outdoor Skills, were named one of the seven most creative cooking classes in the L.A. region. Pascal Baudar joins Cultivating Place this week. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Nurturing – that’s what comes to mind when I think of the work of Blanca Diaz also known as Mama Maiz. Blanca is a practicing doula and herbalist whose work takes her around the country teaching and practicing plant based healing. She nurtures new mothers as they prepare to bring new life into our world, and she nurtures plants for their wisdom, healing and beauty. She nurtures community from the ground up sharing, as she says: “what she has been called and given permission to share.” Blanca believes in, studies and shares with others the power of plants, especially the native plants of our own regions and our relationships to them, in an effort to bring healing, well-being and greater understanding into our lives. Mama Maiz shares with Cultivating Place this week. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, a conversation with Maria Failla, the host of Bloom & Grow Radio – a unique podcast from New York City designed specifically for indoor plant people, urban jungle dwellers, houseplant enthusiasts and succulent killers alike. Join us!

Benjamin Vogt is a next generation student of the beloved conservationist and writer Aldo Leopold and a passionate nature and garden advocate himself. In his book “A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion For An Uncertain Future” he takes the essence of Leopold’s "A Land Ethic" and brings it home to our gardens in some surprising and sometimes challenging ways. Vogt addresses why we need a new garden ethic, and why we urgently need wildness in our daily lives — lives sequestered in buildings surrounded by monocultures of lawn and concrete that significantly harm our physical and mental health. He examines the psychological issues around climate change and mass extinction as a way to understand how we are short circuiting our response to global crises, especially by not growing native plants in our gardens. Simply put, environmentalism is not political, it's social justice for all species marginalized today and for those facing extinction tomorrow. By thinking deeply and honestly about our built landscapes, we can create a compassionate activism that connects us more profoundly to nature and to one another. Join us for Cultivating Place this week to hear more. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, Designing with Palms – in the heart of Spring Break season where those of us in colder climes might be longing for a warm, sunny, palm punctuated beach, we dig into this remarkable plant family and get above and beyond its symbolism and closer to its truer history and essence. Photographed by Caitlin Atkinson and written by Jason Dewees, the staff horticulturist at Flora Grubb Gardens and East West Trees in San Francisco. Responsible for the Tree Canopy Succession Plan for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, Jason serves on the Horticultural Advisory Committee for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, and on The San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers Advisory Council. Join us!

Most gardeners - of the indoor or outdoor variety - love (and covet) a good pot. For house plants, for focal points, for cut arrangements, for … well, just for the love of them. We might even be known to over-collect, over-indulge, over-spend, and overly adore the best of our pots. And I am a gardener taken with the handcrafted pots of Claire Bandfield, a self-taught artist living in Camas, Washington. Originally from Portland, she started making hand cast stone pots for her garden. The planters, made from Portland cement, sand and organic materials, resemble the limestone rock tufa and their distinctive luminous grey-stone tones are lovely counterpoints to anything green. With an appreciation for creating organic objects, Claire’s often simple but elegantly curving forms are inspired by modern architecture and traditional Japanese gardens. The pots will turn green and establish an aged appearance when left outside as the planters attract moss and lichens. Join us this week to hear more of Claire’s garden and container gardening journey.

The healing power of gardens and nature is well known to almost anyone who gardens and has been recorded by gardeners, landscape designers and medical practitioners as far back as antiquity. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Dr. Clare Cooper Marcus, a leader in the field of evidence based research, education and design of what are alternatively known as healing gardens and therapeutic landscapes. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we talk land and water with Hunter Ten Broeck of WaterWise Landscapes Inc. in Albuquerque, NM. No matter where we live, or how differently our land and our water supplies and sources may look, our gardens and our nature love are wholly interdependent with these two much larger elemental forces. For 25 years Hunter has been working in his garden design, garden crafting and educational advocacy to improve people’s relationship to and understanding of their own land and water. February 22 and 23, Hunter will be part of a the annual Land and Water Summit, produced by the Xeriscape Council of New Mexico. This year the theme is: The Ripple Effect - Stormwater and Tree Canopy. There’s lessons here for all of us, no matter where we live. Join us!

Danger! Home gardener, garden communicator and blogger Loree Bohl, loves a garden with stand-out foliage and bold form. But pay attention to where you’re going, or as her mail carrier and her little dog Lila both know - it can be dangerous out there! As Loree writes on her blog: "Nice plants are boring – my love is for plants that can hurt you. Agave, yucca, anything with a spike or spur!” Join us this week for the next in our series of Dispatches from the Home Garden on Cultivating Place.

Last week we talked "Little House on the Prairie" and this week we visit the grassland prairies and plains of Kansas. According to the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas and the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower center in Texas, Tallgrass prairie once covered between 170 to 250 million acres of North America – making it the largest ecosystem in the country. By 1860, the vast majority was developed and plowed under. Today less than 4% remains, mostly in the Kansas Flint Hills. We’re joined in conversation by Brad Guhr, education coordinator and prairie restoration ecologist for the Dyck Arboretum of the Plains in Hesston, Kansas. To learn more about this inspiring ecosystem based landscape. Join us.

This week on Cultivating Place, we’re celebrating the February 7th birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder with Author and historian Marta McDowell. Her newest book is: "The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Frontier Landscapes that Inspired the Little House Books” (Timber Press, 2017) – a surprising plant and environmental journey. Laura Ingalls Wilder is a name familiar to most Americans born and raised in the 20th century. Her “Little House on the Prairie” series of children's books released from 1932 to 1943 were works of fiction based on her childhood in a settler and pioneer family, in a time of rapid Westward Expansion and white settlement. The books were incredibly popular in their day and when they were made into a well-loved television series in the 1970s and 1980s they caught the imaginations of a whole new generation of readers. Certainly if you were a girl born in the second half of the 1900s in the US, you knew exactly who Ma, Pa, Mary, Carrie and Laura were. What you might not have been as aware of as a reader of the books in your formative years, was just how much ecological, agricultural and gardening information and history your were receiving wrapped up in these engaging human stories. Marta McDowell is an historian and author. Her books include “Emily Dickinson’s Gardens” and “Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life”, as well as “All the Presidents’ Gardens”. Her most recent book is “The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Frontier Landscapes that Inspired the Little House Books”. An historical and ecological exploration of a very specific time and place in American History, the book was published by Timber Press in 2017. On February 7th, Laura Ingalls Wilder would be 151. Join us!

This week on Cultivating Place our next in the occasional series of Dispatches from the Home Garden - this time through the lens of a regional newspaper's gardening columnist. Every region needs a paper and at least 1 regionally knowledgeable gardening columnist - Laura Christman was that person in Redding, California for the many years of her long career. "Perhaps you are familiar with the term "gardening." It is a tangle of weirdness. Turns out there's more to it than growing a lovely lawn or prolific pepper plant. Planet Pomegranate is a collection of columns written by journalist Laura Christman for the Home & Garden section of the Record Searchlight, the daily newspaper in Redding, California. The pieces are a mix of conversations, observation, reflections and frustrations…..and pomegranates." Join us!

This week on Cultivating Place we start off the new year with some thoughts on life and our gardens as feasts for the senses, with an eye toward life-long learning and encouraging our own senses of adventure - with purpose. Sarah Statham of Simply by Arrangement has a passion for bringing fine seasonal flowers (grown, arranged and photographed) to the North of England – and the world. She shares with us her thoughts on process, on resolutions and on enjoying at least a short season of rest if you can. Join us.

Georgia O’Keeffe is known as the innovative mother of modernism in the art world. She was also a gardener. O’Keeffe's garden in Abiquiu, NM has always moved me as a visionary, gardener’s garden - one of those gardens of the mind, the hands, the heart and a place. To end 2017 with a flourish, exploring the nature of this human gardening impulse, and entering our own next turns on this great globe, we visit this visionary woman’s beloved garden. Join us.

This week on Cultivating Place, a lesson in garden history seen through the lens of holiday decorations and traditions from seasons past when we’re joined by Laura Viancor, Head of Horticulture, from historic Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia. Join us for the greens and other festive things. Happy holidays.

This week before the Winter Solstice, Cultivating Place is exploring and appreciating the many benefits and beauty of winter’s bountiful darkness – in our gardens and in our wildlands. Join us to listen to the conversation with Keith Ashley and Amanda Gormley of the International Dark-Sky Association, two passionate people within a global organization working to protect natural darkness as the precious natural resource it is.

This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by gardener, author, activist and entomologist, Doug Tallamy. Ten years ago, his first book "Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in our Gardens," made clear how important our own home gardens and landscapes COULD be to improving the outlook for insects, birds and all other wildlife – indeed for the very future and health of our planet. Join us.

As we knock on the door of December, and the garden and its greenery call out to us in very different ways than they do in other seasons of the year, this week on Cultivating Place, we speak with British Gardener, Horticulturist and Floral designer Thomas Broom-Hughes of Thomas Bloom floristry and Petersham Nurseries. He has garden-gathered visions of luxurious winter beauty and traditions to share. Join us.

The late autumn into winter months – from the Harvest Moon rising in October to the Winter Solstice on December 21st and through the beginning of the new calendar year, mark traditional seasons of gratitude, of giving thanks, and of offerings of generous service. For me, my garden itself and my gardening practice are my very best, most consistent acts of both gratitude and service to the world – and I know many other gardeners and cultivators who feel the same. The garden – very much like the grace that writer and thinker Anne Lamott references — rises to meet many gardeners where we are and — sometimes — it does not leave us where we started, but nurtures us along further than we believed was possible. This week on Cultivating Place I am so excited to offer you our first ever seasonal special celebrating this SEASON of harvest, of taking stock, of giving back, of deep GRATITUDE and of preparing for the restorative dark of winter ahead. In this one hour of gratitude and gardening practice and celebration, gardeners from around the world share with us what gratitude in the garden looks like to them. And, our central conversation will be with earth artist Day Schildkret, who makes meaning and beauty with his daily practice of Morning Altars.

The right tools can make all the difference in our lives and in our work. This is as true in gardening as in all other aspects of life. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Dorian Winslow, president of Womanswork, a 35-year-old company which almost 33 years ago now introduced the first work and garden gloves designed specifically for women. Join us.

The 13th century Persian poet Rumi famously wrote: “Let the beauty you love be what you do, there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” Ryland Engelhart and Finian Makepeace took these words to heart and in 2013 founded Kiss the Ground. Named in honor of the famed poem, Kiss the Ground works to restore soils worldwide by promoting and developing models that accelerate the adoption of regenerative agriculture — large scale and home scale. Healthy soil has the miraculous ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, and it’s not just carbon storage; the ways that soil stands to positively impact lives of billions worldwide are tangible and immediate: Clean water. Healthy food. Drought resistance. Restored habitats. You can download or subscribe to the Cultivating Place podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. For additional photos and more, visit CultivatingPlace.com.

Nurturing – that’s what comes to mind when I think of the work of Blanca Diaz also known as Mama Maiz. Blanca is a practicing doula and herbalist whose work takes her around the country teaching and practicing plant based healing. She nurtures new mothers as they prepare to bring new life into our world, and she nurtures plants for their wisdom, healing and beauty. She nurtures community from the ground up sharing, as she says: “what she has been called and given permission to share.” Blanca believes in, studies and shares with others the power of plants, especially the native plants of our own regions and our relationships to them, in an effort to bring healing, well-being and greater understanding into our lives. Mama Maiz shares with Cultivating Place this week Join us. The show is available as a podcast on iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. For photos and more, visit CultivatingPlace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Uk based garden designer Jinny Blom, whose new book is entitled “The Thoughtful Gardener: an intelligent approach to garden design”. After 17 years and more than 250 gardens designed around the globe, Jinny shares with us her thoughtful, creative, musical and heartfelt perspective and process. Join us! You can download or subscribe to the Cultivating Place podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

No matter where you live, the native plants of that area help define the beauty, history and meaning of all life there – from the soil, to the birds and bugs and mammals – four legged and two legged. On Cultivating Place this week we’re joined by the California Native Plant Society to hear more about the state of our native plants and their upcoming Conservation Conference Jan. 30-Feb. 3, 2018. Join us! Read more and see additional photos at CultivatingPlace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by a gardener who lives and works beneath the great, big beautiful Sky of Austin, Texas –one of many real gardening epi-centers in our country. Linda Lehmusvirta is a home gardener and gardening advocate in Austin, and as the Producer of a weekly program on KLRU-TV, PBS in Austin she is most well known as The Central Texas Gardener. Join us. Read more and see additional photos at CultivatingPlace.com.

Elizabeth Lawrence was one of the grand dames of American horticulture in the 1900s. She was not only an avid gardener, but the first trained and licensed woman landscape architect out of the landscape architecture program at University of North Carolina, Raleigh. She designed, gardened and experimented with planting zones enthusiastically in her Charlotte, North Carolina, home and garden from the late 1940s through the mid 1980s. Perhaps most importantly, she shared her experiences and knowledge widely through her beautiful and plentiful garden writing in books, articles and correspondence with other gardeners and horticulturists around the globe. This week on Cultivating Place we're joined by Andrea Sprott, Curator since 2010 of the Elizabeth Lawrence House and Garden in Charlotte, NC, to hear more about the garden and an upcoming celebration of the garden, Elizabeth Lawrence and her legacy of garden writing. Join us!

The healing power of gardens and nature is well known to almost anyone who gardens and has been recorded by gardeners, landscape designers and medical practitioners as far back as antiquity. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Dr. Clare Cooper Marcus, a leader in the field of evidence based research, education and design of what are alternatively known as healing gardens and therapeutic landscapes. Join us!

In the realm of gardenways and traditional garden design being inextricably interwoven with a culture, for me the garden design and techniques, and gardens associated with Japanese culture stand out. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Leslie Buck whose new book, “Cutting Back: My Apprenticeship in the Gardens of Kyoto,” recounts her experience during a three-month intensive apprenticeship with one of the most prestigious landscape and design firms in the storied city of Kyoto learning about her garden art form of aesthetic pruning, while at the same time learning much more about herself. Join us!

When you hear the phrase "gardens of the wild, wild west," what comes to mind? For gardener, author and radio host Mary Ann Newcomer of Boise, Idaho, there’s a long history of intrepid plants, gardens and gardeners that come before her — from the first peoples to the settlers who traveled West as pioneers in the 1800s. On Cultivating Place this week, Mary Ann (AKA The Dirt Diva on the Boise radio waves) shares some of the lessons that we might learn from these histories of plants and plants people no matter where we garden. Join us!

Leslie Bennett is a garden designer of both English and Jamaican descent working out of Oakland, CA. With a Jamaican-born husband, a two year old son, and knowledgeable, passionate views about the importance of cultural heritage, on cultivating Place this week, Leslie shares her journey navigating the marriage of beauty, function, cultural property and the radical activism of gardening. Join us!

Late summer is fire season in the American West. A part of life. This week Cultivating Place speaks with Gary Ferguson, author of "Land on Fire: The New Reality of Wildfire in the West," a collection of scientific lectures about wildfire, which at their best serve as a window into the larger issue of our relationship to the natural world.

In my experience, no home and garden are just perfect. And yet, they are just right if we bring the right perspective. Author and gardener Marianne Willburn shares this belief and she joins Cultivating Place this week to share more about her own gardening journey, and lessons learned from her book Big Dreams, Small Gardens. In this life, we might be tempted to wait to plant our garden until we think we are in just the right space, Marianne urges us to reconsider this and to just get out there and do it. Now. Plant your garden now, no matter where you are. Join us for this lively conversation about the human impulse to garden.

This week on Cultivating Place we hear the next in our series of Dispatches from the Home Garden, this time from a north Seattle neighborhood where artist, gardener and aspiring vermicompost farmer Emily Wilkins tends to composting worms, awkward old maidens of shrubs. She starts and ends her days in the garden with in the company of family and some of her favorite friends – the plants, the worms and all manner of winged insects. Among them, she finds relief, satisfaction, joy and that at at the end of the day having your hands in the dirt is the very best part. Join us!

This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Uk based garden designer Jinny Blom, whose new book is entitled “The Thoughtful Gardener: an intelligent approach to garden design”. After 17 years and more than 250 gardens designed around the globe, Jinny shares with us her thoughtful, creative, musical and heartfelt perspective and process. Join us!

There's something to be said for having deep and historic roots to one region – one gardening and natural history home. I have an admiration for gardeners who’ve been born and raised in the historic home territories of their families before them, who have been working their own gardens for 20, 40 or 60 years. I have yet to live and work in the same garden for more than 7 years. And while I do envy these long tending one spot gardeners, I also see the benefits of having gardened in a wide variety of places, cultures, environments. I was born and raised at 8,000 feet in Colorado, but grew up regularly visiting extended family - and living myself - in a wide variety of environments across the country – from New York City and Boston, to the Adirondack Mountains of New York, the coast of Rhode Island, interior and coastal South Carolina, Northern Idaho, and the downtown's of Los Angeles, Seattle and St. Louis. You see my point. So while I celebrate those who’ve been able to build a relationship with one place for life, I've come to appreciate the kind of wide-angle education my family gave me on the differing look and feel of different places, and on the universal gardening/greening instincts you can start to see repeated by people in any location. This week on Cultivating Place, I’m joined by landscape designer, Katharine Webster. Now a resident of California's Bay Area, she grew up in the North East and spent summers on land and water in the 1000 Islands of Canada. She studied art, sculpture, and finally landscape architecture where she became compelled by the interface between the built environment and the landscape, finding power and meaning in the way that thoughtful and creative designers worked in this interface. With gardening internship experience in New York's Central Park and a family member/mentor who from an early age encouraged and taught her to really LOOK at the world around her, Katharine too has had a life offering a wide-angle landscape and garden education. Her early experiences and educational (formal and life education) journey lit a fire in her to shape landscapes.

In life, there are generalists and there are specialists. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re speaking with botanist Dr. Ben Grady about his work with ornamental buckwheats and the upcoming Eriogonum Society conference in Weed, California. While you may not be familiar with the genus Eriogonum, I can promise you, once you meet these beautiful resilient native flowering plants, you’ll know they’re perfect for us generalist flower folk of American West (and all other summer dry regions of the world).

It is full on summer. Perhaps you are in the very middle of summer holidays here at mid-July. If you are like me, there is a special anticipation to the books of summer we choose to companion us on holiday, at least one of which has to be a garden book. The world of garden writing includes lushly photographed coffee table books, how-to books and garden literature, among others. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by British garden design luminary Dan Pearson to hear more about his newest book "Natural Selection: A Year in the Garden." A lovely work of the heart and the mind's eye, this work of garden literature makes for an enriching summer read. I’ll be traveling with a copy tucked into my beach bag this next week when I am on break. In our conversation, Dan shares about the book and his own gardening journey and philosophy. Join us!

Over the past year of Cultivating Place interviews, we’ve heard references to the importance of the Smithsonian Gardens archives for the research of such historians, writers and gardeners as Marta McDowell while writing "All the President’s Gardens", as Andrea Wulf while she was writing "Founding Gardeners" and "The Invention of Nature", and as Ryder Ziebarth as she was working to document and preserve 5 generations of her family working and gardening on one piece of land. This past May, the Smithsonian Gardens – a branch of the Smithsonian Institution dedicated to enriching the Smithsonian experience through exceptional gardens, horticultural exhibits, collections, and education – launched a new exhibition entitled “Cultivating America’s Gardens”. The exhibition will be on view at the National Museum of American History through August of 2018. In honor of our country’s birthday this week, and the hand-in-hand role gardens play in the history of our country – this week on Cultivating Place I’m pleased to be joined by the curator of the exhibit, Kelly Crawford. In the second half of today’s program we’ll be joined by Cindy Brown, Manager of Education and Collections Management at Smithsonian Gardens to learn more about the gardens and their on-going mission and activities. Happy birthday to the United States of America – seems to me an exhibit celebrating our shared garden history is a perfect gift.

This week on Cultivating Place, a conversation with a home gardener who has moved not just gardens, but continents and hemispheres. As we just reached the height of sunlight with our summer solstice, she eased into her winter. She shares a gardening story of learning, community and adaptability. Pen Pender is a gardener, mother, wife, voracious reader, community activist, bee keeper, cook and novice potter living near Mt. Macedon in Victoria, Australia. While I might never see kangaroos in my garden, and she may never hear the sound of a congregation of acorn woodpeckers, we are still gardening together in some sense. As she digs in and looks appreciatively up at winter over there, I dig in and look up in anticipation of a long hot summer over here. Pen shares her story of gardening under Australian skies. To read more or to see more photos of Pen Pender’s Australian garden, go to CultivatingPlace.com. You can download or subscribe to the Cultivating Place podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

Next week – June 28 to July 4 – our country is celebrating American Flowers Week, celebrating American-grown flowers in 50 states. In celebration, Debra Prinzing, the founder of what’s known as the Slow Flowers LLC — who we interviewed last July — has organized a Slow Flowers Summit in Seattle, Washington on Sunday, July 2. There will be speakers and activities – shared food, shared flowers and shared philosophy. It’s been called a TED Talk day for flower lovers. For more information on the summit, please visit Jewellgarden.com for links. In honor of the upcoming celebrations and the many benefits – emotional, economic and environmental — of locally grown flowers, this week on Cultivating Place we revisit an interview from earlier this year with a leader in the flower farmer renaissance underway: Erin Benzakein of Floret Flower Farms. Benzakien is the name and face behind the beautiful and impassioned Floret Flower Farms, based in the Skagit Valley of Washington state. Floret is at the heart of encouraging and educating would be flower farmers on the whens why and hows of getting started and making a go of this new-again small farm based industry which is rooting itself across the country and even around the globe. Erin’s new book "The Cut Flower Garden" – aimed at new and beginning flower farmers — is out now from Chronicle Books. She joins us today via skype from the farm.

In our last Cultivating Place "Dispatches from the Home Garden," we heard from a young gardener experiencing her first garden dislocation/relocation in Sacramento, California. This week – in many ways in honor of Father’s Day — we hear from another home gardener, this time in New Jersey and this time on the same land her grandparents cultivated and which she and her husband, with the steady help and mentorship of her father, became the fourth generation of her family to steward this land after her uncle died and the property went on the market. The 20 years since taking on the family farm has seen a lot of hard work, the restoration of some elements of the homestead and the re-envisioning of other elements. Barns have been stabilized, old rose borders are now mixed perennial beds, and what was once an outbuilding is now our home gardeners writing studio, her father has now died. Other things – including the legacy and spiritual presence of her father – have remained reassuringly similar. Sometimes our gardens are adventure stories in which we are on a vision quest to find out who we are. Sometimes they are our anchors to windward in reminding us who we are and where we came from. Sometimes they are both. Gardener, writer, wife, mother, and daughter Ryder Ziebarth shares her garden journey on Cultivating Place this week. Join us!

This week on Cultivating Place we hear the story of the first 15 years of the Edible Communities – the umbrella name of the many publishers who bring you the edible communities publications across the US and Canada. Fifteen years ago, two women who cared about food, Tracey Ryder and Carole Topalian, published a 16-page, one-color newsletter to help connect the farmers in their area to the food-lovers in their area. That was the birth of Edible Ojai, and the beginning of what is now known as the Edible Communities publications – the rich look and face of local food across North America. Edible Communities, a James Beard Foundation award-winning family of 100 locally owned and licensed magazines devoted to the local food movement, is marking its 15th anniversary this Spring. Since the launch of Edible Ojai (California) in 2002, Edible Communities’ publications have become an influential voice in the food world by keeping focused and passionate about local food, how it’s grown and harvested, what defines regional flavors and trends, and how to prepare and present food in a way that’s rooted in local culture. This week Cultivating Place is joined by Nancy Painter, executive director of the Edible Communities media, from her offices in Maplewood New Jersey to hear more - join us!

Gardening is a specifically human endeavor. It is a characterizing feature of our species, fairly well documented throughout our evolution. Which fascinates me. And each of us come to this endeavor for our own reasons and needs – sometimes very practical, sometimes very esthetic, sometimes spiritual. Our gardens are like some larger version of our very fingerprints. Today Cultivating Place welcomes a home gardening member of the so called “millennial” generation, and self-described Urban Homesteader. Despite having grown up around gardening, she did not begin to really absorb its importance and her own attraction to it until her own early adulthood. Today, she shares with us her journey so far, some of the lessons and highlights, her first experience leaving an established garden, and the opportunities presenting themselves to her in her new garden. Melissa Keyser, along with her husband Matt, have recently relocated from Santa Rosa, CA to Sacramento, CA. After four years spent building and establishing what they imagined to be their “forever home,” their journey has taken a twist. She is blogs about their pursuit of a sustainable urban homesteading life at sweetbeegarden.com. Listening to the story of Melissa and Matt’s gardening and homesteading journey I am struck by a couple of things – the first being that there is little new under the sun, but that the fun part is often part and parcel of discovering and learning some of these things for ourselves. The second thing I am struck by is hope. Each generation of horticulturists, gardeners and plant lovers will necessarily respond to the prevailing social, cultural, economic and political winds of their own moment in time, and for me there is beauty, taste and hope in their resourcefulness and resilience in doing just this.

What do we mean when we use the word “wild” and why does it matter? In 2017, the New York City urban landscape commonly known as The High Line celebrates its official 5th birthday. This milestone is being marked by the publication of a new book entitled "Gardens of the High Line: Elevating the Nature of Modern Landscapes" (Timber Press, 2017), coauthored by plantsmen Piet Oudolf and Rick Darke, with graphic design by Lorraine Ferguson. Oudolf is the renowned plantsman responsible for overseeing the planting design and plant choices, and Rick Darke has documented and collaborated on the project since its inception. "Gardens of the High Line: Elevating the Nature of Modern Landscapes" reflects decades of dedication to viewing gardens through the lenses of cultural geography and social anthropology. The specific garden design and plant choices of these now famed and highly visited gardens is of global interest and a primary focus of the new book. But the philosophy and design ethos underpinning the layered meaning in the book’s subtitle: elevating the nature of modern landscapes - is absolutely as compelling. Author, photographer, philosopher, and landscape ethicist Rick Darke joins Cultivating Place via skype this week to discuss both aspects of the High Line in greater depth. Join us!

Melinda Benson-Valavanis is a floral designer and owner of MCreations in Chico, CA. She recently committed her business to participating in a project called re-bloom – in which she accepts the flowers from a wedding or other large event after the event is over and and re-purposes them for distribution to people and communities who might need a bit of floral energy and cheer in their lives. In this season of extravagant and joyful weddings, graduations, reunions and anniversaries – I can’t think of a better way to pay love and joy forward - and along to its next recipients. Melinda is with me this week on Cultivating Place from the North State Public Radio studios to share more. Join us!

This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Jan Johnsen – a gardener, landscape designer and author of the books "Heaven is a Garden" and "The Spirit of Stone,” both published by St. Lynn’s Press. As a speaker for botanical garden show audiences, Jan loves to share her insights on the beneficial effects of informed garden design. Her unique approach — incorporating ancient practices with contemporary ideas — is entertaining, inspiring and informative. Join us!

Spring is a time of awakening and full sensory immersion in the world around us - even if we aren’t gardeners or nature lovers. It is hard to avoid, ignore or miss Spring’s reckless abundance and generosity. It is the perfect counterpoint to the winter’s restful, healing darkness and dormancy. In appreciation for all of spring’s growing energy, I am pleased to be joined this week by Dr. Raymond Barnett, author of “Earth Wisdom: John Muir, Accidental Taoist, Charts Humanity’s Only Future on a Changing Planet,” which he published in 2016. In this season of worsening news about our health of our world’s climate and ecosystems, and the seemingly ever more threatening nature of political abuse of what few protections we have in place for our water, air and planet’s diversity of life in the pursuit of in misguided financial “gain” - a book like this one catches my eye, my imagination and my heart. In our interview Ray shares the story of how he came to write the book and the his own journey of studying and embracing the ancient Chinese Taoist philosophy and his recognizing its tenets in his deepening study of John Muir over the past 5 years. What results is his comparing of Taoism and John Muir’s separate but interestingly parallel “immanent world views,” in which Ray sees profound hope for the life - and heart - of our world. Once understood and adopted, Ray believes, from this immanent world view - pillaging our earth’s natural resources, abusing or dismissing the equal importance of all of its many life forms, make no sense at all to anyone, no matter your political, spiritual or economic interest. In this "immanent world view” Ray sees “three pillars”: 1. That this earthly world is our true home - there is no better place, this is not a test; 2. that we as humans are equal to, and intimately related to all other living things. Humans are not “higher” and do not have “dominion” but are 1 part of a very complex and interdependent whole; 3. That in all of life there is a critically important balance always being calibrated between opposite energies - light and dark, hard and fluid, female and male, Yin and Yang, and that if any individual, culture, or ecosystem is out of balance and overly dominated by any one energy, then it is not healthy and will not be able to sustain itself over time. It is a compelling and thought provoking conversation - join us! Ray is the author of 7 previous titles, which encompass the varied fields of study for which he has not only deep passion, but also expertise, including: evolutionary ecology, particularly that of California, Natural History, mountaineering, traditional Chinese Language and Culture, mystery fiction and John Muir.

Close to 21 years ago, a Cordon Bleu trained chef and business woman named Jane Scotter left a busy city life in London and bought a farm. She was joined not long after by another professional chef, Harry Astley. Together the two have taken their 16 idyllic acres in Herefordshire, England and crafted a life fully integrated and interdependent with the land, its plants and animals, their food, their own sense of purpose and the energetic cycles of the moon and the seasons. Their farm - Fern Verrow - is not just any farm, it is a biodynamic farm and in 2015, Jane and Harry, with the photographic assistance of Tessa Traeger, produced a lushly reciped and photographed account of their energetic farming journey. I've always been fascinated by biodynamics - its earthy and yet other-wordly attributes and awareness, and I’ve been eager to learn more. As we near that universal and ancient celebration of land and re-growth, May Day, Jane and Harry join us this week on Cultivating Place. Original images by Tessa Traeger, the book "Fern Verrow" is published Quadrille Press.

It is California Native Plant Week this week. Officially designated by the California Native Plant Society in 2010, this year the festivities and educational and awareness activities are scheduled all week April 15–23. In celebration of this and in honor of the many native landscapes I love, and native plants that bring beauty, life and a deep sense of place to my home garden, this week I am pleased to welcome Dennis Mudd to Cultivating Place. Dennis is a retired tech industry CEO and developer of such things as MusicMatch and Slacker Radio. He is also an avid native plant home gardener in Poway – near San Diego. In an effort to improve his own native plant home gardening efforts, five years ago now Dennis teamed up with the California Native Plant Society and The Jepson Herbarium to create the now extensive easy to use, online gardening resource known as Calscape. Join us to hear more!

“Useful, with a pleasant degree of humor” — that is the tag line for the Old Farmer’s Almanac, an annual handbook for American growers, farmers and gardeners — celebrating its 225th year in publication this year. Every year for the past 225 years, farmers, gardeners, landholders and growers of all kinds have been consulting the Old Farmer’s Almanac for weather predictions, growing suggestions and important dates based on — among other things — astronomy. On Cultivating Place this week, we’re joined by Janice Stillman, the 13th editor and first female editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac to hear more. Join us!

If you’re like me, you love getting out into your own garden, but visiting someone else’s garden is almost as good — there’s just less weeding required. The end of March/beginning of April is also the unofficial kick off of garden-visiting season, with garden tours and open garden days on local, regional and national levels, and of all shapes and sizes, getting started now and running right through to November in some parts of the country. While open gardens and garden tours are hosted by organizations large and small, and individuals both famous and obscure, there are few open garden days as well known or well organized across the US than the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Laura Wilson, recent past West Coast coordinator of the Garden Conservancy’s National Open Days Scheme. The 2017 Open Days directory will be out by the end of March letting those of us who love such things know where, when and which gardens are open around the country. Each year my directory has more pages dog eared than the last year. Join us!

Gardenways and "The Chinese Kitchen Garden" - a conversation with gardener and author, Wendy Kiang-Spray I am fairly accustomed to hearing the phrases “folk ways” and “food ways” and even ‘music ways” to describe the history, traditions, and myths associated with these subject areas in distinct locations or cultures. Only recently have I come to think of the history and traditions one brings to the garden or gardening as our “garden ways” – and the garden ways of other people are endlessly fascinating to me as one lens by which we see the world/one lens by which others can learn something of importance about us and who we are. When my children were small, we had a fabulous story book entitled: “The Ugly Vegetables”, written by author Grace Lin, whose parents were Taiwanese immigrants to the United States. In this children’s books she shares the universal concept of what makes us different and what brings us together through a young girl’s uncomfortable recognition that the garden her Chinese mother was growing was very different from the gardens being grown by their neighbors. The girl keeps asking her mother why she is growing such ugly and unusual vegetables when everyone else is growing beautiful flowers and so called “normal vegetables”. Her mother keeps saying – just wait. Ultimately, her mother’s long season vegetables ripen and are harvested and her mother makes the most delicious aromatic soup – the scent of which wafts throughout the neighborhood and brings the neighbors running, bearing gifts of flowers. The whole neighborhood then shares a meal of the amazing soup. The experience of reading this book with my children was transformative for me – and was hands down the first time I was consciously aware of the fact that we all have different garden ways and these are full of rich information. And, as a side effect, I’ve wanted to grow Chinese vegetables ever since. And make something that brings people together. When I saw an announcement about the early 2017 publication of writer, gardener Wendy Kiang-Spray’s first book “The Chinese Kitchen Garden” (2017, Timber Press) I knew I wanted to talk to her. Wendy joins Cultivating Place this week from the studios of NPR in Washington DC.

Sometimes when you use the word garden – people immediately conjure up images of the ornamental perennial border, other people however conjure up colorful visions of the summer vegetable garden. In July of 2016, we were joined by Stefani Bittner of Homestead Design Collective discussing her work as ornamental edible landscape designer. Early in 2017, her most recent and beautiful book, Harvest, was published by 10 Speed Press. Stefani co-wrote Harvest – Unexpected Projects Using 47 Extraordinary garden Plants with Alethea Harampolis. We’re celebrating the new publication and the upcoming growing season by revisiting our summer-time interview with Stefani. Enjoy. Stefani Bitner is co-owner with fellow plantperson, floral and garden designer Alethea Harampolis of Homestead Design Collective based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their newest book, "Harvest - Unexpected projects using 47 Extraordinary Garden Plants" came out this spring from Ten Speed Press.

It is the eve of St. Patrick’s Day and it does seem that even if you’re not Irish per se, St. Patrick’s Day brings out a little bit of Irish in us all. And while I have no interest in green beer, I do have an interest in the green of the garden. To celebrate this – today we’re pleased to be joined by Fionnuala Fallon, a horticulturist, garden writer, garden designer and organic flower farmer, and gardening correspondent for 'The Irish Times' since 2011. Her first book, photographed by her husband Richard Johnston, "From the Ground Up: How Ireland is Growing Its Own" was published by Collins Press in 2012.

Every garden has a story as does every gardener. In our next in the occasional series of Dispatches From the Home Garden, today we travel to the Pacific Northwest and cross the border to Canada, where we speak with a gardener, writer and floral designing flower farmer who joins us via skype. Christin Geall is the founder of Cultivated, an urban flower farm and design studio, and a literary gardening column which appears every two weeks in the Black Press group of newspapers. Christin also teaches creative non-fiction at the University of British Columbia in Victoria. She and I enjoy a conversation about her internationally inspired and trained, thoughtful gardening journey from avid home gardener to professional floral designer, urban flower farmer, and workshop host/mentor. Christin is a gardener who loves a challenge and prefers unusual and old-fashioned varieties of flowers and plants. I love this quote from her: “Appreciate the fact that you wouldn’t be a gardening at all if you weren’t the type to run long on hope. Love this about yourself and let go.”

There is a flower farming revolution sweeping across our country and I for one am all for it. A few months back, Cultivating Place was joined by Debra Prinzing, the founder of the aptly named “slow flowers” and "American Grown Flower" movement in the floral industry. This week we’re joined by Erin Benzakien – the name and face behind the beautiful and impassioned Floret Flower Farms, based in the Skagit Valley of Washington State. Floret is at the heart of encouraging and educating would be flower farmers on the whens, whys and hows of getting started and making a go of this new-again small farm-based industry, which is rooting itself across the country and even around the globe. Erin’s new book "The Cut Flower Garden," aimed at new and beginning flower farmers, is out this month - March - from Chronicle Books.

As gardeners or naturalists, we often share an urge to display our love – flowers or fruits of the season arranged in bottles and vases, in bowls and on platters. The deep beauty of the harvest and the season have a strong call. As gardeners who harvest food and flowers, as nature lovers who gently forage fallen moss, lichen, stones, feathers, or cooks who prepare our fruits, vegetables and foraged edibles we all experience that moment – perhaps daily of saying: what will I put that in? What vase, large or small, what dinner plate, what cake plate, what bowl? Thirty years ago, Frances Palmer answered this question in its various forms with this answer: I will set my table with items I have hand formed from an idea in my imagination, from the energy of my hands from the earth beneath my feet. Almost ever since, her hand thrown and built terra cotta, porcelain and earthenware creations have been sought after by gardeners, cooks, floral and tablescape artists. This week I am joined by Frances Palmer to hear more about the symbiotic relationship between her garden and her art. She joined us via Skype from her studio in Weston, CT.

Late winter early spring might be kind of quiet in the garden in terms of flowers, but it is very busy in terms of plant care – especially in the care of keeping of our roses. Roses are a favorite of many gardeners, a staple of many gardens, they have been cultivated, celebrated, bred and judged for more than 5,000 years around the world. Roses can and are grown just about anywhere in the world. Their history and mythology runs deeply through the roots of cultures around the world. Roses are among the pluralists of the world. They can be ancient or modern, they can be brassy and bright or elegant and understated. They can be edible, native, tenaciously perennial, fragrant, large, small, climbing, cuttable and endlessly arrangeable. The roses have it all. And late winter, early spring is an active time for caring for your roses: everything from choosing and planting bare root selections to pruning and feeding your established roses. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Jolene Adams, a recent past president of the American Rose Society, an active rosarian and dedicated home gardener with more than 150 roses in her Hayward, CA home cottage garden.

Have you ever noticed how every garden has a story? No matter how many gardeners might have worked that spot: just 2 - for instance mother nature AND you, or multitudes: you and the many who known or unknown may have worked that ground before you – the land you cultivate, hike, or gaze at, has a story. Likewise, every gardener has a story – no matter how many gardens they’ve cultivated or at what point in their lives they came to their engagement in gardening or love of natural history - there are stories there. Figuratively, these stories might take the form of haikus, a well-crafted short story, a rambling run-on sentence, or an epic novel. But as Alfred Austin famously said: Show me your garden and I’ll show you who you are. In the first year of Cultivating Place, I heard a good lot of feedback from listeners and friends. One piece of feedback from a friend was this: “I want to hear from real home gardeners, too, what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, how they cope.” I liked the idea of this kind of sharing – a kind of Dispatches from the Home Garden. While every garden and every gardener have this act of cultivation in common, they are all necessarily different in their living details. We all have fingerprints, and they are all unique. I think something meaningful is learned in sharing both our commonalities and our differences. This week we’ll hear from the very friend that sent this feedback/request. She sent it more than once, so it only seemed fair that she would help to craft and kick off our Dispatches from the Home Garden story time. In the interest of full disclosure, she is one of my oldest friends in the world: Christl Findling - satellite builder and home gardener from Lookout Mountain, Colorado. Join us!

“Anyone who’s gazed at the moon or stood still in a magnificent stand of trees knows what it’s like to experience the Power of Awe – it seems to slow time, proffer reverence for life and connect us to one another. Recent research shows that when we spend time outside in nature, engaging all our senses, our heart rates slow, our stress hormones dip, our thoughts grow both more expansive and less self-focused.” This week on Cultivating Place, award winning author Florence Williams discusses her newest book “The Nature Fix – How Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative," which is out on shelves from Norton the first week of February. Having grown up in New York City, Florence went on to spend a large part of her professional writing career, which focuses on science, the environment and health, till now living in or close to the wide open wild spaces of the West - notably Colorado. When her husband’s career took their young family to Washington DC, she found herself experiencing a depression and irritability that ultimately led her to a curiosity about the physical, emotional and intellectual effects of access to nature on not just her but the human body and soul as a whole. The Nature Fix is the story of her researching and reporting on the scientific research going on around the globe into this question. Join us!

Digging deep: this is a phrase that has a wide variety of meanings and uses – both literal and figurative — in the garden, and in the body, mind and heart. In a new year, many of us have a tendency to generate a to-do list of tasks and projects to start, to get in order or to finally this year complete in our lives – and if we are gardeners, our gardens are not left out of this energetic attention and intention. To help integrate some of this energy — shore up your resolve and energize your physical, spiritual and artistic muscles — this week I am joined by Fran Sorin, “best-selling author, unshakeable optimist, coach and CBS radio news contributor.” In 2004, with a well-established career in garden design, garden journalism and garden coaching, Fran published, “Digging Deep – Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening.” In 2016, a new revised edition of the book was published.

It is mid-January. It is deep mid-winter, even in my relatively mild USDA zone 9, Sunset zone 8. While I am fortunate enough to have a year-round Saturday farmer’s market available to me, my own home garden is looking spare. Which is at it should be this time of year, but it could be looking a little less spare while still remaining seasonally appropriate. One of MY New Year’s resolutions is to strive to do a little better on this front. After the calendar year 2016, I would like to feel a little more self-reliant. Call me crazy - I’m starting with adding a few raised vegetable beds to my little home garden. For a little refresher course, I pulled out my trusty-old “The Four-Season Harvest” by Eliot Coleman (Chelsea Green, 1992), which was formative to my first on-my-own adult garden in the 1990s. Today, I am joined by Eliot Coleman, esteemed plantsman, gardener and author based in Harborside, Maine, where he lives and gardens year round at Four Season Farm. Eliot and his wife, Barbara Damrosch (a noted gardener and garden writer herself — perhaps you follow her regular contributions to The Washington Post?) were early proponents and continue to be enthusiastic advocates for growing your own seasonally appropriate, sustainably tended, food year-round — no matter where you live. Eliot is also the author of "The New Organic Grower" and “The Winter Harvest Handbook."

As a celebration of the many ways that one’s cultivation of place can benefit not only the individual cultivator – gardener or naturalist – this week on Cultivating Place I’m joined by John Carlon, president of River Partners, a nonprofit organization working to create wildlife habitat for the benefit of people (economically and environmentally), water (quality and conservation), wildlife and the wider environment (including benefitting agricultural productivity and quality) by restoring successional riparian corridors throughout watersheds of the Western United States.

Happy New Year! For over 100 years Sunset magazine has been inspiring gardens and gardeners in the American West. This year marks the first full year for Sunset’s gorgeous, innovative new demonstration and display gardens at Cornerstone Sonoma. Join me this week when Cultivating Place converses with Sunset’s Garden Editor Johanna Silver - inspiring New Year’s resolutions for garden living. Join us.

There is something inherently satisfying about a full circle – a completion – a beginning brought to its fullness and coming to its natural end, which leads right into the next beginning. This full circle satisfaction is true for cycles of the moon, cycles of the seasons and cycles of the field and garden. For me this is especially apparent at the Winter Solstice and, of course, the full circle of a calendar year. It’s long been customary to celebrate the year’s end by toasting to the old and welcoming the new with a glass of something bubbly – and I decided Cultivating Place should too – but not just any bubbly, rather one that is deeply grounded in this cultivation of place and all its systems and intricacies we find so vital and fascinating. A glass of bubbly that embodies and is as interdependent with the soil, water, wildlife and plant life of place as we are. So what better bubbly than the most ancient of fermented spirits, nectar of the gods — honey-based mead. To that end, and to new beginnings, today, I am joined by Gordon Hull, mead maker and owner of Heidrun Meadery – makers of dry, sparkling mead based in Point Reyes, California.

In this season of the winter solstice — marked by the beauty and appreciative contemplation that mark the celebrations of winter holidays the world around, I very much wanted this week's Cultivating Place to acknowledge the diversity, value and fragility of our native plants and their communities. No matter where you garden or cultivate place now, or where you might have done so throughout your life, the native plants of any place are what signify, identify and root that place as its own. Native plants — ornamental, edible or useful, common, rare or endangered — all cultivation and gardening is based upon the native plants of somewhere. This week, I honor the native plants of my place — the native plants of California, one of the world's biodiveristy hotspots, with more native and endemic plants than certainly anywhere I've lived or gardened before now. To help me in this celebration of the plants of our own places, my guest today is Michael Kauffmann, editor-in-chief of Backcountry Press and author of several books exploring the natural history of some signature plants of the western forest, including — so seasonally appropriate — "Conifer Country, Conifers of the Pacific Slope" and "A Field Guide to Manzanitas,” one of our native broadleaved evergreens. As of January 2017, Michael is also the editor of Fremontia, the journal of the California Native Plant Society.

The famous British gardener and writer Vita Sackville-West stated that no room is ever complete without flowers. This week on Cultivating Place we explore this idea with Vietnamese-born New York Based photographer and writer Ngoc Minh Ngo. Her most recent book “In Bloom – Creating and Living with Flowers” beautifully portrays the imaginative and surprising ways in which 11 different artists and thinkers around the world weave their love of flowers into their everyday lives.

Emily Dickinson references plants, flowers, nature or her garden in more than one-third of her known poems, with many more references in her extensive correspondences with family and friends. Flowers and nature provided her with both “inspiration and companionship.” In celebration of the poet’s upcoming birthday, this week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Jane Wald, executive director of the Emily Dickinson Museum, who’s overseeing current research and restoration of the Dickinson’s historic home garden and conservatory. Join us!

The term “herbal” refers to far more than a soothing tea or tasty spice. An herbal is a book or otherwise codified collection of knowledge about the use of plants for food or medicine. Dating back as far as ancient Egypt, Sumer and China, there are more herbals published every year. On Cultivating Place this week, I’m joined by Stephen Orr, editor-in-chief of Better Homes & Gardens and author of "The New American Herbal," published by Clarkson Potter/Random House in 2014.

Every year about this time, the light wanes, the temperatures drop and we as people draw in a bit, hunker down and begin whatever we can of a winter dormancy. For gardeners and non-gardeners alike, I think, there is a human urge to sometimes craft our garden plants, branches, flowers, seeds, cones and fruit into other, artful and unique creations — for doorways, for gates, for windows, for tabletops. For me this urge is particularly strong in fall and winter. Perhaps it’s an effort to preserve the beauty; perhaps it’s an urge to celebrate and give thanks for the abundance. Or both. For Thanksgiving Day on Cultivating Place, we pay homage to this urge and this age-old tradition when we’re joined by two artists who have an eye, hand and heart for just this kind of craft. Join us as we “gather” and “season to taste” a variety of seasonal plant crafts with gardener, stylist and photographer Caitlin Atkinson, author of "Plant Craft” (2016, Timber Press), and Alethea Harampolis, floral designer at Studio Choo and coauthor of "The Wreath Recipe” (2014, Artisan Books) about the traditional and not so traditional practice of crafting wreaths (and swags and branches). Join us!

As we enter a traditional two-month period marked by celebrations of giving thanks, this week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Qayyum Johnson, farm manager of Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin, CA. Practicing in the Zen Buddhist tradition and farming 7 acres of cool season crops, Qayyum explores with us the connection between the back breaking physical labor of farming and the cultivation of awareness, generosity and thanksgiving in our minds and spirits. Join us!

This week on Cultivating Place, we speak with Steve Van Hoven Chief Arborist and Horticulture Supervisor of Arlington National Cemetery, Memorial Gardens and Arboretum. This historic landscaped national military cemetery sits on the location of what was once the home estate and gardens of General Robert E Lee and his wife Mary Custis Lee in Arlington, Virginia. More than 400,000 veterans are laid to rest there, among many gardens and more than 8.600 trees. In 2015 Arlington was accredited with LEVEL II arboretum status.

Gardens can be important repositories for cultural and environmental history. From the plants included to materials used — you can read a great deal about time and place in any garden. This might be particularly true of gardens created and cared for at the turn of the 19th century in England and the United States — a time marked by the unprecedented expanding financial, journalistic and horticultural wealth of the industrial age. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Gail Read, garden manager of Blithewold, to explore the history embedded in any garden. Blithewold, which is Welsh for “ Happy Wood,” is a nationally significant Country Place Era house, garden and arboretum on Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay.

Gardens and landscapes, gardeners and gardening are integral to our cultural literacy and sense of place and self as a nation. In 1989 Frank Cabot founded the Garden Conservancy in the United States in an effort to preserve exceptional gardens and landscapes for the future. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by George Shakespear of the Garden Conservancy to hear more about its work, including its garden education and conservation mission as well as its dynamic Open Days program, which brings access to many, many other private gardens across the country each year. Several episodes ago, Cultivating Place spoke with the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, California. That remarkable garden resulting from one woman’s passion and dedication became the garden that essentially launched the Garden Conservancy – an American nonprofit organization founded in 1989 by Francis Cabot. The conservancy is dedicated to preserving exceptional gardens and landscapes for the future.

I don't know about you, but for me the garden grounds me, at the same time that it liberates me. Being out in nature - in the garden or on the trail - opens my mind and heart, settles me down while simultaneously teaching me about and connecting me to nature, science and humanity. For some, the combination of grounding, expansion and liberation that can be gleaned from a greater understanding and connection to the natural world is crucial and valuable in even more immediate ways. This week on Cultivating Place, Kelli Bush and Carl Elliott of the Sustainability in Prisons Project in Washington State join us from the studios of KOAS Community Radio on the Evergreen State College campus. Kelli is the Program Manager for the Sustainability in Prisons Project, Carl is the project’s Conservation Nursery Manager.

Thomas Rainer is a “horticultural futurist fascinated by the intersection of wild plants and human culture." A landscape architect by profession and a gardener by obsession, Rainer is co-author of “Planting in a Post-Wild World,” (Timber Press 2015). He joins Cultivating Place this week to explore what gardening in a post wild world looks like and why, despite collective wounds and losses, there’s hope and beauty to be found in the cultivation of resilient plant communities in any place large or small we might find to plant them. Hope you’ll listen!

Every garden has something to teach me – truly. About plants, about people, about space and light and place. I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA – the result one dedicated gardener woman’s life-long curiosity and admiration for cacti and succulents as she gardened in a dry climate. The garden started in the early 1950s as a private collection of potted plants. By 1972, the collection had outgrown its location and was moved to its current site, which at the time was an old walnut orchard. After being seen by the founder of the Garden Conservancy, Frank Cabot in the late 1980s, the Ruth Bancroft Garden became the first in the United States to be preserved by The Garden Conservancy. Open to the public since 1972, the garden remains an outstanding example of a Dry Garden. On Cultivating Place this week, we’re joined by Gretchen Bartzen, Executive Director of the Ruth Bancroft Garden to hear more. "The Bold Dry Garden - Lessons from the Ruth Bancroft Garden", is a new book out from Timber Press about the life and garden of a remarkable plantswoman, Ruth Bancroft and her epic cacti and succulent garden in Walnut Creek California. The book is written by Johanna Silver, Garden Editor for Sunset magazine, and is gorgeously photographed by Marion Brenner.

Some people garden for food, some people garden for beauty, and some people garden and farm for cloth. Sandy Fisher is a weaver and fiber artist who since 1980 has literally interwoven her artistic eye, her impulse to garden, her love of natural fibers and natural dye colors to create functional art. An appreciator of beauty and all its textures and colors and patterns, Sandy Fisher is a co-founder of the Chico Flax Project and Chico Cloth, both of which will be represented at the annual Fiber Fusion celebration this coming October at the Patrick Ranch in Chico. The Chico Flax Project is a young initiative experimenting with grow flax in order to produce a locally-grown linen. On Cultivating Place this week, Sandy — artist, weaver gardener, and in many ways activist — shares with us her journey of gardening for sustainable cloth.

Today is the Autumnal Equinox. If gardening at its core is an activity of optimism, then planting fall bulbs is one of its most profound gestures of hope wherein you plant something that looks like next to nothing and then some months later – perhaps when you might need it most — it appears out of the cold, damp earth and then — it blooms. This week Cultivating Place is joined by Scott Kunst, founder and soon to be retiring owner of Old House Gardens — purveyers and champions of heirloom bulbs varieties from around the world and throughout time.

Does simply removing your lawn bring you up to speed as a gardener? Have you noticed how when a lawn is replaced with a garden, some homeowners approach these new gardens with the same mow and blow management technique they afforded their prior lawns, while others seem to assume these are static installations and leave them to their own devices of overgrowth, weeds or death. Into this gap comes a brave new crop of fine gardeners – and they are not what they used to be. This week Cultivating Place is joined by Jenn Simmons, who will talk to us about the path to becoming and the benefits of seeking the help of a fine gardener. Jenn Simmons is a home gardener, and garden manager/fine gardener for Ruskin Gardens in Palo Alto.

In the wake of the ongoing drought in the state of California, the state and many municipalities have offered incentives for homeowners and businesses to replace their thirsty lawns with native and drought tolerant “plantings." Writer and activist Michael Pollan once wrote that when an American rips out his or her lawn, they become — perforce — a gardener. We’ll explore this idea from two sides, that of CalWater, a publicly traded water provider in Northern California which for the last two years or so has challenged water users to reduce their water use, and had offered financial incentives to homes and businesses who replace their grass lawns with drought tolerant gardens. We’ll also hear from a homeowner who took this challenge and experienced the life-changing event of becoming a gardener and garden lover.

Landscape architects create outdoor spaces with intention and thought. While the effects are often unnoticed consciously, they are absorbed and experienced nonetheless — impacting us, our culture, and our understanding of place — historically and right now. Kelly Comras explores some of these ideas with us on Cultivating Place this week.

Dr. Peter Raven is one of the leading plant biologists in the world today, having begun his botanical and natural history journey falling in love with the plants and animals of Central California, the Sierra Nevada and under the encouragement and mentorship of many leaders in the field at the California Academy of Sciences beginning when he was 8 years old. Dr. Raven is President Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, one of the country’s top three botanical research institutions. Dr. Raven retired in 2011 after 40 years at the helm in Missouri, but his tireless advocacy and outreach in defense of conservation and the protection of biodiversity continues. He joins me this week on Cultivating Place to share his passion.

It's late summer. The light is shifting incrementally each day now — tilting toward a new season. I notice especially in those transitory, crepuscular moments of dawn and dusk. The light is moving towards a new, quieter season in the garden and the colors of my garden are shifting with it. Some of the saturation is waning, other shades are deepening, bright giving way — very slowly, almost imperceptibly — to earthy

This week on Cultivating Place, life in the garden gets a little more wild when we speak with Beth Pratt-Bergstrom, California director of the National Wildlife Federation. Beth is the author of the recently released book titled "When Mountain Lions are Neighbors - People and Wildlife Working it Out in California.”

Sometimes when you use the word garden – people immediately conjure up images of the ornamental perennial border. Other people, however, conjure up colorful visions of the summer vegetable garden – beginning to groan this time of year under the abundance and literal weight of the summer harvest of tomatoes, peppers, corn, zucchini and so on. Throughout history, these two distinct kinds of gardens – let’s call them the ornamental garden on one hand and the edible garden on the other – have had lots of overlap sometimes inadvertently and sometimes very intentionally. Who among us has not noted the beauty of the blossoms on any fruit tree, the freshness of the first peas of spring, or comforting shape and color of the apples of autumn? And who does not fully appreciate the double duty of some of our flowers and flowering plants – roses and salvias and nasturtiums, for example, in being both edible and beautiful? Today we are joined by Stefani Bittner, co-owner with fellow plantperson, floral and garden designer Alethea Harampolis of Homestead Design Collective based in the San Francisco Bay Area. They design gardens that are both beautiful and incorporate edible plants throughout. Stefani is co-author with fellow edible garden designer, Leslie Bennett, of “The Beautiful Edible Garden” (2013, Ten Speed Press). In February of 2017 Ten Speed Press will publish a book co-authored by both Stefani and Alethea entitled “Harvest.”

Kristin Currin is owner and founder with her husband Drew Merritt of Humble Roots Native Plant Nursery in Mosier, Oregon. Situated at the interface between temperate rain forest, the Great Basin and the Columbia River Gorge, Humble Roots has a mission to inspire gardeners, nature lovers and conservationists to deepen their relationship with native plants.

Cultivating Place this week welcomes Debra Prinzing, the producer of slowflowers.com, the online directory to American flower farms, and florists, shops and studios who source domestic and local flowers. I would be surprised if most people I spoke to today — pretty much no matter where I might be in the US — were not familiar with the term slow food. Are you familiar with the term and movement known as Slow Flowers?

In this election year, and with the Independence Day holiday just past, we have something of a patriotic garden theme going. This week, we’re joined by Marta McDowell, a gardener, historian and writer who lives in Chatham, New Jersey. Her self-described greatest interest lies in the relationship between writers and their gardens — the connection, as she says, “between pen and trowel.” This interest is well-illustrated and developed in her titles to date including “Emily Dickinson’s Gardens,” “Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life,” and most recently the patriotic history of the White House Gardens entitled: “All the Presidents’ Gardens” out now from Timber Press, and the focus of our conversation.

Are you a person who takes refuge in the natural world or your home garden? If so, then you appreciate the many benefits of these for regrouping from life’s stresses, large and small. As we look to the Fourth of July, we’re joined this week by Ann Mead Daniel, co-founder with her husband Scott Robertson of Gardens for Heroes. It’s a young non-profit in the Washington DC area, whose work seeks to help wounded veterans and their families find space and resources for regrouping and healing in the context of their own home gardens.

This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Genny Arnold, Seed Program Manager at the Theodore Payne Foundation who speaks with us about the care and long-term keeping of our native geophytes — those coolest of plants which have an underground storage organ, like a bulb or tuber or corm, which helps them to withstand some of the planet’s harshest conditions: cold, heat, drought and dark. Or a hot dry California summer. California is home to close to 300 species of native geophytes, many of which are now rare or endangered. This spring, after a winter of closer-to-normal rainfalls, many of our bulbs are treating us to a particularly spectacular year of bloom.

The impulse to garden is prismatic, right? It's about connection, about beauty, about plants, about productivity and self-sufficiency, about health and community. It can be political. It can be spiritual. Is the impulse that draws people to cultivate their home gardens the same one that draws them to and grounds them in farming? When we say farm, what are the lines between small farms, family farms, and large tracts of mono-culture farming that we might place under an umbrella we’d call perhaps Big Agriculture — where the human it seems is more removed from any discernible connection to land and is more focused on commodity? This week we’ll explore some of these questions with Lundberg Family Farms.

Flower gardens grow flowers, vegetable gardens grow vegetables, and, yes, butterfly gardens grow butterflies. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Matthew Shepherd of the Xerces Society, a national nonprofit organization based in Portland, Ore., which protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat. For more than 40 years, the society has been at the forefront of invertebrate protection worldwide, harnessing the knowledge of scientists and the enthusiasm of citizens to implement conservation programs.

Ever wonder how a plant got its name? Or for whom it was named and why? Those are the sorts of questions that started historian and author Andrea Wulf down the path of her research. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Ms. Wulf, the author of multiple books exploring the ways nature, botany and horticulture influence art, science, politics, human culture and even the development of nations.

Salvias are among my favorite of flowers. Do I say that about a different plant group just about every other week? It could be. Let’s say then that this week, this time of year, salvias are among my very favorite of flowering plant groups. And it’s a big and diverse group, so you’re not bound to get bored with them any time soon. In my current suburban garden – small no matter how you slice it – I have nine salvias and counting. In some of our recent Cultivating Place conversations we have heard of the value of salvias for pollinators and habitat and the many native salvias in California. Today we’re going to dig a little deeper into this well-loved cornerstone herbaceous perennial with Salvia expert Ernie Wasson.

We all know that human development impacts nature, and that the most developed of human spaces — cities — without any nature in them, negatively impacts humans. Since the very beginnings of the fields of landscape architecture and public planning, there have been designers, builders, thinkers and dreamers who have worked to interweave nature — its sense of green, of refuge, or peace — into these otherwise very inorganic areas, for the benefit of both the ecological world and the benefit of humans. Think of Frederick Law Olmstead’s work in New York’s Central Park and many, many other urban parks across the country at the turn of the 19th century. To varying degrees of success, generations of landscape architects since Olmstead have carried the torch.

Nothing says place like the cultivation and caring for the plants native to your place. As gardeners we hear a lot about native plants. This is perhaps especially true in the past 20 years or so. And it is perhaps especially true in California, one of the 33 biodiversity hotspots in the world and home to an astounding number of native and endemic natives – meaning those natives that only occur in their specific locations here. Today we’re joined by two people who have been on a leading edge of the ever-increasing interest in California Native Plants for the home gardener for the past 35 years. In 1981 Sherrie Althouse and Phil Van Soelen were two young twenty-somethings who began the unconventional California Flora Nursery — one of the oldest native plant nurseries in the state, located in Sonoma County.

Do you have particular plant groups you like more than most? Because of family history or where you live, perhaps? The Geranium family of flowering plants rank right up there for me. And I’m not alone. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Robin Parer — founder and owner of the specialty Geraniaceae Nursery, champion of all members of the Geraniaceae family. She is also the author of “The Plant Lovers Guide to Hardy Geraniums,” out now from Timber Press.

Sometimes flowers, gardens and nature speaks to us. Sometimes we employ them to speak on our behalf. What do our gardens and flowers say to the world? This week on Cultivating Place, we're joined by two people who cultivate hope and opportunity through flowers indirectly and directly in their lives. We speak with Vanessa Diffenbaugh, author of the New York Times Best Selling novel “The Language of Flowers,” and Shelly Watson, founder and director of Bloomin’ Hope, a vocational floral skills program for women at the Jesus Center in Chico. Diffenbaugh is the featured speaker at an upcoming fundraiser for the Jesus Center in Chico on May 14.

This week, we’re joined by Dr. Bill Thomas: gardener, farmer, parent with his wife Jude, and Harvard-trained geriatrician and international authority on eldercare. In the 1990s he co-founded with his wife Jude a transformative philosophical approach to how we care for our elders — or ourselves — as we age, known as "The Eden Alternative.” The Eden Alternative challenges us as individuals and as a culture to reframe how we imagine life in elderhood — that we imagine it to be more like a garden and less like a prison.

On Cultivating Place this week we talk with Mary Pat Matheson and George DeMan, the current president and founding president of the Atlanta Botanical Gardens respectively. In April of this year, the Atlanta Botanical Gardens are reprising one of their most popular exhibits of all time: fine art glass sculptures by artist Dale Chihuly throughout the garden. Both of our guests, as well as the artist Dale Chihuly, bring different — and not particularly plant-based — perspectives on how art in gardens and gardening can bring meaning and enjoyment to those who experience them. If there is one plant group all three people have in common, it might be the bright spring woodland color of native Rhododendrons and azaleas.

Sometimes our understanding of what gardening or a garden are can be expanded just by asking for someone else’s history and understanding of these terms. This week on Cultivating Place, we're joined by Dr. Elizabeth Hoover — gardener, beadworker, fancy shawl dancer and professor of American studies at Brown University.

If seed is the beginning and end of all plant life, soil is the place that most seeds call home. Soil then is a foundational aspect to any garden a very important place for all of us to cultivate consciously. This week on Cultivating Place, our conversations on what gardens and gardening mean continue with Deborah Koons Garcia, writer, director and producer of the full-length documentary "Symphony of the Soil," a feature presentation at CSU, Chico's This Way to Sustainability Conference. The film will show at noon Friday, March 25, with Garcia in attendance to introduce it and answer questions following.

“Seed draws you in,” says Micaela Colley. “They capture your imagination,” Kalan Redwood adds. Seeds are the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of most plant life. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Micaela Colley, Executive Director of the Organic Seed Alliance based in Port Townsend, WA and Kalan Redwood of Redwood Seeds in eastern Tehama County. Redwood Seeds is a member of the Organic Seed Alliance's national network of organic seed growers. They provide us with environmental health, food, utility and incredible biodversity supporting all manner of life – join us to hear more about maintaining their integrity, diversity and supply.

This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Daniel Atkinson — teacher, student, scholar of the African American Diaspora and Jazz and Rhythm and Blues music and dedicated home gardener. Currently gardening in Puyallup, Wash., Daniel shares his thoughts on saving and sharing the seeds handed down to him by his ancestors — some of which have been in his family for more than 200 years. He also discusses the connection for him between music, surfing, gardening and life.

The first official day of spring is right around the corner, and among other things that means we're in the heart of flower and garden shows around the country. This week, we speak with Sam Lemheney, Chief of Shows and Events for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which annually hosts the famed Philadelphia Flower Show. The longest-running horticultural event in the country (not counting Spring herself), the Philadelphia Flower Show is a pilgrimage destination for many horticulturists and gardeners around the country.

This week our guest is something of a renaissance man. A Colorado native of Greek descent, Panayoti Kelaidis has a background in Chinese literature and as a computer systems analyst in addition to being an expert in — and enthusiastically curious about — most things that photosynthesize and contain chlorophyll.

Cultivating Place: Gardening, Designing and Living With Lorene Edwards Forkner by Jennifer Jewell

For more than 25 years, Julie Moir Messervy has inspired gardeners, readers and thinkers with her garden designs and her garden philosophy. She inspired host Jennifer Jewell years ago when she first read her book “The Inward Garden.” In our interview we hear about her education as a gardener, her seminal work as a designer and some of her deeply held beliefs, including that “deep within each of us lies a garden.”

This week on Cultivating Place, the program’s conversations begin with Bernard Trainor, the Australian-born landscape designer. Known for his iconic California gardens, Trainor is both a hands-on gardener and a big view, large concept designer. His philosophy and work illustrate the power of specific place in any garden or cultivated landscape — no matter how big or small, urban or rural.