Cultivating Place

Some Floral tete a tete fun visits Cultivating Place this week just in time for the New Year. Josh Werber – founder of Floral Tete a Tete, a creative journey that began with a challenge to create an artistic floral headpiece every week for a year - three years ago now. The florals are really fun and the weekly practice led Josh to the heart of his creative inquiry. Fun and Creative Practice for the New Year Ahead. 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. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Recalibrating our nervous systems and the art of seasonal, local floral design is what we’re exploring On CP this week with Max Gill, floral designer perhaps best known for his weekly floral artistry at Chez Panisse in Berkeley California. On the eve of the Winter Solstice, Max is inspiring and instructional for us all this holiday season. 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. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In constant conversation with her home garden, our guest this week on Cultivating Place is committed to both the listening and the speaking roles. In this newest episode in our occasional series, Dispatches from the Home Garden, Ilene Flax of Boulder, Colorado shares how she visits with her plants while watering them, and how she is grieving the impending loss of her beloved Ash trees to the Emerald Ash borer. 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 by heading to www.cultivatingplace.com. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit www.cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Did you say you needed a good Garden Book Recommendation?! The holidays and end of year are upon us – and with them, all those lists. Things to do, food to cook, intentions to make, gifts to consider. To help in your deliberations, this week, I’ve gathered a handful of gardeners from ranging interests and locales to offer some thoughts on good books that catch their eyes and imaginations this season. Join Yolanda Burrell, owner of Pollinate Farm and Garden in Oakland, CA; Lorene Edwards Forkner, Editor of Pacific Horticulture magazine and based in Seattle WA; And Pen Pender, Home Gardener, bee-keeper, baker, and avid garden book reader in Mt. Macedon Australia for a round table discussion of good garden books we love now (and some of which we loved for a while now)! 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 by visiting www.culitvatingplace.com. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Do you ever stop to wonder where your garden tools came from? The history behind plant and garden trends or techniques? Gardens and garden history are microsms of world history and every story illuminates the larger course of humanity. In her new book "The Compendium of Amazing Gardening Innovations," Abigail Willis highlights 50 important gardening innovation. Host Jennifer Jewell also share her reflections on the innovations and adaptations put to work in states of emergency such as her region continues to face in the aftermath and long road to regeneration following the #CampFire. 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 by visiting www.culitvatingplace.com. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In the wake, and still the fury of the #CAMPFIRE here in Northern California - we lean into some escapism on this long weekend of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Last week we prepared ourselves for the season of gratitude and this week we here in the U.S. lean into the long Thanksgiving Holiday weekend with an aspirational armchair tour of inspirational new gardens around the world. We’re joined with horticulturist and longtime public garden administrator, Chris Woods sharing with us about his new book: GardenLust. Join us.

This week on Cultivating Place, we revisit our Gratitude Special of last year - celebrating this season of harvest, of taking stock, of giving back, of deep GRATITUDE and of preparing for the restorative dark of winter ahead. Our central conversation is with earth artist Day Schildkret, who makes meaning and beauty with his daily practice, and now global outreach and book known as Morning Altars. Woven throughout the episode are gardeners from around the world sharing with us what gratitude in the garden looks like to them. It’s incredibly painful again to write this week - one week since the #CAMPFIRE of California broke out and swept across (so far) 148,000 acres of this beautiful landscape of the California Floristic Region, close to 10,000 human homes destroyed, hundreds of businesses, at least three nurseries destroyed or damaged, the members of several dedicated garden clubs and master gardener groups profoundly impacted. And that's just what we know as of today. I know that the fires continue south of here, ravaging those landscapes. I recognize that there's loss, devastation, and tragedy of all scales around our globe daily - today my heart is heavy here, in my home - home of the Maidu, Wintu, Concow and other indigenous peoples, home of so many endemic and native plant and animals friends and lives held dear, home to me and my family for 11 years now. Several weeks ago now Sarah and I determined to revisit our Gratitude Special from 2017 this week, in part to prepare ourselves for this traditional season of harvest and thanksgiving and in part to celebrate the publication of Day Schildkret's new book Morning Altars. Which is well worth celebrating. It did not of course occur to us that this episode would air in this time of chaos and loss. And yet it did. While for some the storylines might feel too soon, too raw, to hard to hear - I hope for others it hold seeds of hope and possibility for the next season of growth. While the landscape and nature all around us in the midst of natural disaster might not seem like a source of solace, might instead seem like causes for fear, the words of Leah Penniman of several weeks ago come back to me: "While the land might be the scene of the crime, the land itself is NOT the crime." While she was of course speaking to Black and Brown farmers and cultivators, reminding them of their rightful, beautiful, and dignified reciprocal and ancient relationship to the land - I would offer her thought out as a seed of hope for all gardeners in my region for whom gardening, relationship, and pleasure from their scarred landscape might seem distant right now. While so much is being done in the here and now for immediate needs of people affected by this disaster - my thoughts are toward the many dedicated and passionate gardeners in our area and all that they’ve lost. Losses like these will come into clearer focus as time goes on and be very painful, and yet might also seem insignificant to these gardeners in the face of everything. I want you gardeners to know that you are seen and supported, and that the gardening community wants to help your and your important gardening passions as they rebuild. Stay tuned for support efforts in the works and coming soon. I am grateful to be here with you in community, Love, Jennifer

In this week after All Hallow eve, Day of the Dead, Samhain, All Saints Day, and All Soul’s day – I thought – let’s visit a garden for our ancestors. This week we head East, to hear about a renovation project of the Asa Gray Garden at the historic Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts. No ghosts, but a good 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 by heading to cultivatingplace.com. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Soul Fire Farm is a working farm in upstate New York committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system, co-founded by Leah Penniman. Leah is also the author of Farming While Black, documenting her work and passion for black and brown people coming back into healthy relationship with land and good food, which is out on shelves this week. The inspirational Leah Penniman shares more with Cultivating Place this week. 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 by making a donation at cultivatingplace.com. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more conversations like this one with Leah Penniman. For photos of Leah and Soul Fire Farm visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

"Our craving to connect with nature continues to be the perfect foil for the magic of the human imagination," writes photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo. This week Cultivating Place wraps up "Artober" with Minneapolis based 3-dimensional paper artist Ann Wood, of Woodlucker Studios, and a revisit to a conversation with Vietnamese-born, New York-based artist and writer Ngoc Minh Ngo, who spoke to us about her book: "In Bloom: Creating and Living with Flowers," a collection of 11 portraits of artists inspired by the natural world. These two artists portray beautifully the endless creativity of botanical artistry. Join us! In case you didn't hear, the Cultivating Place team now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place by donating to the podcast at cultivatingplace.com. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.