Cultivating Place

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...

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, c...

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...

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 enthus...

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 but...

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 h...

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 i...

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...

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 w...

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 lock...

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...

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...

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...

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 w...

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...

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 Museu...

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...

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 Sp...

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 complexi...

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 luxurio...

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 y...

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...

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...

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 Cu...

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...