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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 Kenan 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...