Cultivating Place

Jennifer Jewell / Cultivating Place
  • 4.7 (332)
  • PHILOSOPHY
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY
Cultivating Place

Gardens are more than collections of plants. Gardens and Gardeners are intersectional spaces and agents for positive change in our world. Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden is a weekly public radio program & podcast exploring what we mean when we garden. Through thoughtful conversations with growers, gardeners, naturalists, scientists, artists and thinkers, Cultivating Place illustrates the many ways in which gardens are integral to our natural and cultural literacy. These conversations celebrate how these interconnections support the places we cultivate, how they nourish our bodies, and feed our spirits. They change the world, for the better. Take a listen.

  1. The Vibrant New Natural Gardening of Kelly D. Norris

    3D AGO

    The Vibrant New Natural Gardening of Kelly D. Norris

    You might remember Cultivating Place's first conversation with Iowa-based plantsman, Kelly D. Norris, back in 2021, in celebration of his book New Naturalism, designing and planting a resilient, ecologically vibrant home garden. And we’re so pleased to get him back this week in conversation with CP Guest Host Ben Futa to talk more about this current moment in naturalistic design, and Kelly’s newest and very useful book: Your Natural Garden, a practical guide to caring for an ecologically vibrant home garden, which published in January of this year. Kelly is one of the leading horticulturists of this generation, and in his practice, he explores the narrative of place through site-specific plantings and landscape interventions. An award-winning author and plantsman, his eponymous design studio works in public and private places across North America. The studio annually produces the New Naturalism Academy, a virtual school for enthusiastic designers, as a commitment to continuing education and lifelong learning. He’s also the founder and curator of The Public Horticulture Company, an emerging ecological landscape startup based in Des Moines, Iowa. He is the former director of horticulture and education at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, where for eight years, he directed efforts in design, curation, programming, garden, and facility management to nearly $20 million in capital projects. We’re so pleased to share his plant-driven, utterly magic, paradigm shifting work with you all again. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making 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.

    1h 5m
  2. Transformational: From banker to trailblazing IDEA leader in public horticulture, Mae Lin Plummer

    MAR 27

    Transformational: From banker to trailblazing IDEA leader in public horticulture, Mae Lin Plummer

    This week on Cultivating Place, guest host Abra Lee is in conversation with a horticultural leader with big IDEAs. Mae Lin Plummer is the Director of the IDEA Center for Public Gardens in Denver Colorado. Mae Lin’s journey into gardening started in her backyard in Charlotte, NC where she simply wanted "a pretty place to throw parties." That blossomed into a full-on plant obsession and a major career shift—from banking to horticulture. Mae Lin’s passion is connecting people to the natural world through gardens. Her story is filled with joy, life lessons, and a deep love for how gardens can transform lives. 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 and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

    58 min
  3. Spring Equinox Special - Practicing re-enchantment: Encountering Dragonflies with Brooke Williams

    MAR 20

    Spring Equinox Special - Practicing re-enchantment: Encountering Dragonflies with Brooke Williams

    Happy Spring Equinox! To welcome Spring – especially this exact Spring in the US - practicing re-enchantment in our world seemed exactly the right focus. I think this is part of what Gardeners do: practice enchantment or love with the natural world we care for. We’re in conversation this week with Brooke Williams: writer, naturalist, amateur conservation ecologist, thinker, observer, and walker. Based in the Great Salt Lake region of Utah with his wife, acclaimed writer Terry Tempest Williams, Brooke writes about evolution, consciousness, and his own adventures exploring both the inner and outer wilderness in our world. He is also a Gardener, and author most recently of Encountering Dragonfly, Notes on the Practice of Re-Enchantment. Dragonflies are of course among our favorite and most enchanting of companions in the garden – our built-in pest control for other insects such as mosquitos; predators who are not themselves pests in our lives. Squadrons of dragonflies patrolling the garden or wild lands in Summer are symbols everywhere of transformation and balance. For the ecological and symbolic importance of dragonflies to our human lives, I am so pleased to welcome Brooke to 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 and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

    1h 13m
  4. Life is Big: To Be A Poet Gardener, Tess Taylor

    MAR 13

    Life is Big: To Be A Poet Gardener, Tess Taylor

    Tess Taylor is a self-described Poet Gardener – and if there is ever a season to feel the poetry of life in the garden and with the plants in every cell of your body, it’s springtime! An award-winning poet with many collection titles to her name and editor of the life-supporting anthology Leaning Toward Light Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them, Tess is also the Poet Laureate of El Cerrito, California. In honor of Women’s History Month AND the vernal equinox arriving next week on March 20th,  I thought we could all use some poetic focus. I am so pleased to share this conversation with Tess 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 and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

    1h 5m
  5. The Curious Dr. Margaret Funk, Flora & Frost

    MAR 5

    The Curious Dr. Margaret Funk, Flora & Frost

    Dr. Margaret Funk is the curious Midwest gardener (and doctor) behind the online name Flora & Frost. Cultivating her Minnesota garden for years, like so many of us, she really dove in deep in 2020. She and her family have now converted most of their lawn into a vibrant garden with a small greenhouse, raised beds for veggies, ornamental plants, and a growing collection of native plants. As an online communicator herself, Margaret combines her love of gardening with her with her love of science AND laughter. She has a remarkable skill at presenting often complex topics in an accessible, authentic, inspiring, and entertaining way. In honor of Women’s History Month, Margaret joins Guest Host Ben Futa this week on Cultivating Place - 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.

    57 min
  6. From East Africa to the World, landscape design's Wambui Ippolito

    FEB 27

    From East Africa to the World, landscape design's Wambui Ippolito

    From East Africa to the World, landscape design's Wambui Ippolito by Jennifer Jewell

    53 min
  7. Portrait of A Black Woman in Her Garden: Leslie Bennett, Pine House Edible Gardens & Black Sanctuary Gardens

    FEB 20

    Portrait of A Black Woman in Her Garden: Leslie Bennett, Pine House Edible Gardens & Black Sanctuary Gardens

    In celebration of Black History Month and looking forward to Women’s History Month - this week we’re so pleased to air another of our CP LIVE: Dialogues to Grow By conversations, recorded live in front of an audience on the home ground of the Cultivators of Place with whom we are speaking.  This week’s CP LIVE recording focuses on the paradigm-shifting landscape work of Leslie Bennett, who is dedicated to beautifully designed, edible-plant-rich, culturally rooted gardens for all people AND centering Black Women in the American Landscape. It’s a great pairing. The interview and gathering for it took place on an unexpectedly chilly evening in late September 2024. Still, the spirited audience of 80+ people - in full celebratory finery - was not bothered at all. And the event was also an occasion for the first public unveiling of photographic portraits by Rachel Weil of the first eight women beneficiaries of a Black Sanctuary Garden. The portraits are taken of each woman in their gardens - embodying, as Leslie described it, their full and authentic joy and liberation. The whole evening unfolded in the heart of elegant, fruit, flower filled terraced backyard garden - one of the black sanctuary gardens to date. This conversation and all it was trying to express and hold space for was richly integrated with community, with an event specific shared music playlist, with laughter and food. Cultivating Place live is a special project of CP in the form of a limited series of CP interviews done with a curated group of gardeners across the US and recorded as audio and film (by the talented filmmaker Myriam Nicodemus of EM EN) throughout 2024 and 2025. These interviews are conducted in front of an audience of the gardeners’ community in order to support and recognize these gardeners’ accomplishments and contributions to the greater good as a result of their human impulse to Garden. These recorded CP Live experiences will be compiled into a film documentary rolling out in 2026/2027.  The mandate for me in these experiences and interviews is to not only give voice to (as the podcast always does), but actually make visible the many diverse connections animated by the gardening impulse everywhere. What this conversation makes visible to me, and I hope to all listeners, is that gardens are food, beauty, health, and divinity. Gardens are land use. Gardens are community centers, gardens are one form of public policy made manifest by the people. Gardens are authentic joy and liberation. 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 and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

    1h 18m
  8. The Curiosity Driven Growing Life of Australia's Michael McCoy

    FEB 12

    The Curiosity Driven Growing Life of Australia's Michael McCoy

    Many things motivate and drive us to love gardening, plants, and nature. Australia’s Michael McCoy, also known as The Gardenist, is a Gardener, botanist, designer, teacher, and international garden tour guide. In his garden life, motivation always comes back to curiosity. He says: "Behind any answer are 10 more questions leading me forward in the garden, in life!” And, in his garden, "a lot of soul searching goes on." (As it should!) As The Gardenist, he considers his work a “hub for curious gardeners on a lifelong learning curve.” Here, Here! He joins us this week to share more and his enthusiastic curiosity might just spark yours! 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.

    1 hr
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4.7
out of 5
332 Ratings

About

Gardens are more than collections of plants. Gardens and Gardeners are intersectional spaces and agents for positive change in our world. Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden is a weekly public radio program & podcast exploring what we mean when we garden. Through thoughtful conversations with growers, gardeners, naturalists, scientists, artists and thinkers, Cultivating Place illustrates the many ways in which gardens are integral to our natural and cultural literacy. These conversations celebrate how these interconnections support the places we cultivate, how they nourish our bodies, and feed our spirits. They change the world, for the better. Take a listen.

Information

  • Creator
    Jennifer Jewell / Cultivating Place
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2025
  • Episodes
    379
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2016 - Cultivating Place
  • Show Website
    Cultivating Place

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