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.