This week in this season of endings and beginnings again, we welcome back writer, backyard tender, and heartfelt observer Margaret Renkl joining us to share more about her newest, likewise heartfelt book: “The Comfort of Crows, A Backyard Year.” 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.

This week on Cultivating Place, we return to the artistry and also the activism of our plant-loving and garden-growing lives in conversation with Olly Costello. Through their remarkable colors and forms and interconnections made visible - from the life of the soil to the lives and forms of plants and humans right on up to the myriad stars in our galaxy-night skies - Olly draws us all together. Olly is a white non-binary queer illustrator, food grower, honey bee tender, and a seeker of mysticism. Through their creative work – which includes both visual arts and community building and reimagining - Olly explores themes of interconnectedness, cosmology, reciprocity, queer ecology, biomimicry, and emergence. They are perennially interested in cultivating our radical imaginations to help us all shape our emergent new world – in and out of the garden. 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 Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week, we enjoy a conversation with a gardener and garden guru well- known and loved: Joe Lamp’l of the famed and award-winning Growing a Greener World on PBS and The ‘joe gardener’ Show podcast. Growing a Greener World is not just a show name but a nearly life-long mission for Joe. While he is known for his organic vegetable gardening knowledge and advocacy, Joe likewise loves the wilder side of his place in the world and ecological function is a top priority along with his human garden community. And at the end of the day, Joe is a lot like all of us: he just loves playing in the dirt with his plant friends. In our ongoing exploration into who gardeners are, where gardeners are, and what they are growing in this world, Joe Lamp’l joins Cultivating Place to share more about his garden life – and how he enhances ours—the rest of us “joe gardeners.” 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 Podcast. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As we move toward October, the first a few intermittent episodes reminding us of the artistry behind our plant and garden love, the artistry underpinning mother nature herself. This week we’re in conversation with artist Libby Ellis – photographer who sees the fullness of creation in the many faces of the flowers who delight us. Libby Ellis is a fine art photographer based on the island now known as Martha’s Vineyard homeland of the Wampanoag people and nation who named the beautiful island Noepe. Monochromoatic and often single focused Ellis’ work lands in my heart in a similar way as a Georgia O’Keeffe painting or a Dorothea Lange portrait – all of them capturing the essence of one subject while contributing insight into the workings of life itself – nature, plus the workings of humanity and its perceptions. In the case of Libby Ellis – the focal point include everyday flowers from Cosmos to musk roses, hibiscus to magnolia. And her work has been featured from various locations on Martha’s Vineyard including the Featherstone Center for the Arts and the Carnegie Museum to London’s Saatchi Gallery for the Royal Horticultural Society’s 2022 Botanical Art and Photography exhibit, from the Harvard Divinity School to large scale projection against a high rise building in Denver, CO. Libby joins us from her studio in Edgartown MA (on the to share more about her photographic eye and gardener’s heart.

Maria Popova, creator of The Marginalian, discusses her 16 years of exploration in wonder and human expression. Topics include the connection between gardening and nature, the intersection of control and creativity, the importance of wonder, the joy of association, and the characteristics of the mire lemon. Expert advice on watering plants and uses of mire lemons are also shared.

On this special edition of the show, our guest will be Cultivating Place’s wonderful host, Jennifer Jewell. Jennifer has a new book out and it’s very special.  A very intimate and, at the same time, global take on the natural and social science aspects of one of the most fundamental things to life on Earth – seeds. Jennifer’s book is titled What We Sow: On The Personal, Ecological and Cultural Significance of Seeds.  It’s an exploration of the lives of plants and people through the cycle of a botanical year viewed through the fundamental lens of seeds. With our guest host, Dave Schlom of NSPR’s Blue Dot program and podcast, we’ll hear about the good and the bad when it comes to the modern world of seeds - from those produced by natural plants battling to adapt to climate change to those produced by human hands. 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, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week, our second episode on gardens and green spaces of New York City, getting us primed for The Garden Conservancy’s inaugural Garden Futures Summit being held at the New York Botanical Garden on Sept. 29th and at gardens across the city on Saturday, Sept. 30th. This week, we head to The High Line – a 1.45 elevated linear garden - one of New York City’s green space highlights. We’re in conversation with Richard Hayden, Director of Horticulture at The High Line since 2022. A horticulture and public garden enthusiast, Richard is all about connecting people with the power of plants. Join us! All photos courtesy of Richard Hayden and The Friends of The High Line, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. The self-seeded wild high line prior to revitalization and curation demonstrates the biodiversity of flora and fauna possible on this elevated railway line. Top image by Joel Sternfeld. 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, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

To kick off September, we head to the Big Apple, where at the end of the month, the Garden Conservancy is holding its inaugural Garden Futures Summit on September 29th and 30th. In preparation, we thought we’d dedicate two episodes to checking in on some garden lives in the city. This week we’re in conversation with photographer, artist, author, and gardener Ngoc Minh Ngo, sharing more about her newest work, “New York Green,” profiling in word and uplifting photography more than 40 exceptional parks and gardens of the five boroughs that comprise New York City. “From tiny corner lots to acres of old-growth forests, New York is filled with a wealth of beautiful green spaces–if you know where to look,” and Ngoc Minh Ngo’s book shows us just where to look. Ngoc was a previous guest on Cultivating Place in 2018, and I am so pleased to welcome her back. 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, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Chad Manley is a fellow and lecturer in the School of Landscape Architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Nora Jacobs and Carlos Velasco were two of the Masters of Landscape Architecture students in Chad’s spring 2023 Landscape Architecture Design Studio entitled Dancing the Dragon’s Jaw – a deeply imagined course of study designed by Chad “inviting students on a smokey dance of space-making along a continuum of Northern and Central California landscapes," and that resulted in an "accretive semester’s long individual-collective physical and digital collage." As a culmination of the students' learning and creative term, they traveled as a group to California to “dance through its communities, meadows, and mountains, meet with fire keepers; land managers; scientists; artists; and designers, situating the journey within both the urgencies and poetic potentials of a land-on-fire.” The studio-developed ‘pyro-loci,’ worked to consider and “re-imagine an empathetic landscape architecture born of regenerative fire" – and regenerative, inclusive, and expansive learning mindsets. They learned from books, from other designers and design history, from the drawing board, but they also learned on and from the land and people for whom their design might be of greatest benefit. In our second week of back-to-school-themed episodes devoted to plant education in school and in life, the three join Cultivating Place this week to share more. 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, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Can you believe it is already back-to-school season? This week, we look at what back to school means for our lifelong learning with plants. This week, we’re in conversation with members of the Miami University of Ohio engaged with Miami’s Institute for Environment and Sustainability Masters of Environment program and Institute for Food Farm to learn more about just a few of the ways plant and horticultural information in integrated into the daily life of Miami’s curriculum. In September of last year, I had the pleasure and privilege of visiting with students, faculty, and horticultural facilities at Miami of Ohio, and it impressed upon me even more urgently the importance of supporting and demanding strong horticultural and ecological curricula in our educational systems at all levels - from pre-school to Pre-med and PhDs of all kinds. This week, Ross Olson, the Coordinator of Miami’s Institute for Food Farm, Colin Valantino, an IES graduate student doing a Summer Client Project “practicum" with the farm, and Aisley Carpenter, a student worker at the farm, are all with Cultivating Place to share more. 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, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.