Cultivating Place

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...

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...

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...

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 thi...

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 ou...

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...

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 te...

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 welcom...

“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...

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 regi...