Cultivating Place

This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by a gardener who lives and works beneath the great, big beautiful Sky of Austin, Texas –one of many real gardening epi-centers in our country. Linda Lehmusvirta is a home gardener and gardening advocate in Austin, and as the Producer of a weekly program on KLRU-TV, PBS in Austin she is most well known as The Central Texas Gardener. Join us. Read more and see additional photos at CultivatingPlace.com.

Elizabeth Lawrence was one of the grand dames of American horticulture in the 1900s. She was not only an avid gardener, but the first trained and licensed woman landscape architect out of the landscape architecture program at University of North Carolina, Raleigh. She designed, gardened and experimented with planting zones enthusiastically in her Charlotte, North Carolina, home and garden from the late 1940s through the mid 1980s. Perhaps most importantly, she shared her experiences and knowledge widely through her beautiful and plentiful garden writing in books, articles and correspondence with other gardeners and horticulturists around the globe. This week on Cultivating Place we're joined by Andrea Sprott, Curator since 2010 of the Elizabeth Lawrence House and Garden in Charlotte, NC, to hear more about the garden and an upcoming celebration of the garden, Elizabeth Lawrence and her legacy of garden writing. Join us!

The healing power of gardens and nature is well known to almost anyone who gardens and has been recorded by gardeners, landscape designers and medical practitioners as far back as antiquity. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Dr. Clare Cooper Marcus, a leader in the field of evidence based research, education and design of what are alternatively known as healing gardens and therapeutic landscapes. Join us!

In the realm of gardenways and traditional garden design being inextricably interwoven with a culture, for me the garden design and techniques, and gardens associated with Japanese culture stand out. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Leslie Buck whose new book, “Cutting Back: My Apprenticeship in the Gardens of Kyoto,” recounts her experience during a three-month intensive apprenticeship with one of the most prestigious landscape and design firms in the storied city of Kyoto learning about her garden art form of aesthetic pruning, while at the same time learning much more about herself. Join us!

When you hear the phrase "gardens of the wild, wild west," what comes to mind? For gardener, author and radio host Mary Ann Newcomer of Boise, Idaho, there’s a long history of intrepid plants, gardens and gardeners that come before her — from the first peoples to the settlers who traveled West as pioneers in the 1800s. On Cultivating Place this week, Mary Ann (AKA The Dirt Diva on the Boise radio waves) shares some of the lessons that we might learn from these histories of plants and plants people no matter where we garden. Join us!

Leslie Bennett is a garden designer of both English and Jamaican descent working out of Oakland, CA. With a Jamaican-born husband, a two year old son, and knowledgeable, passionate views about the importance of cultural heritage, on cultivating Place this week, Leslie shares her journey navigating the marriage of beauty, function, cultural property and the radical activism of gardening. Join us!

Late summer is fire season in the American West. A part of life. This week Cultivating Place speaks with Gary Ferguson, author of "Land on Fire: The New Reality of Wildfire in the West," a collection of scientific lectures about wildfire, which at their best serve as a window into the larger issue of our relationship to the natural world.

In my experience, no home and garden are just perfect. And yet, they are just right if we bring the right perspective. Author and gardener Marianne Willburn shares this belief and she joins Cultivating Place this week to share more about her own gardening journey, and lessons learned from her book Big Dreams, Small Gardens. In this life, we might be tempted to wait to plant our garden until we think we are in just the right space, Marianne urges us to reconsider this and to just get out there and do it. Now. Plant your garden now, no matter where you are. Join us for this lively conversation about the human impulse to garden.

This week on Cultivating Place we hear the next in our series of Dispatches from the Home Garden, this time from a north Seattle neighborhood where artist, gardener and aspiring vermicompost farmer Emily Wilkins tends to composting worms, awkward old maidens of shrubs. She starts and ends her days in the garden with in the company of family and some of her favorite friends – the plants, the worms and all manner of winged insects. Among them, she finds relief, satisfaction, joy and that at at the end of the day having your hands in the dirt is the very best part. Join us!

This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Uk based garden designer Jinny Blom, whose new book is entitled “The Thoughtful Gardener: an intelligent approach to garden design”. After 17 years and more than 250 gardens designed around the globe, Jinny shares with us her thoughtful, creative, musical and heartfelt perspective and process. Join us!

There's something to be said for having deep and historic roots to one region – one gardening and natural history home. I have an admiration for gardeners who’ve been born and raised in the historic home territories of their families before them, who have been working their own gardens for 20, 40 or 60 years. I have yet to live and work in the same garden for more than 7 years. And while I do envy these long tending one spot gardeners, I also see the benefits of having gardened in a wide variety of places, cultures, environments. I was born and raised at 8,000 feet in Colorado, but grew up regularly visiting extended family - and living myself - in a wide variety of environments across the country – from New York City and Boston, to the Adirondack Mountains of New York, the coast of Rhode Island, interior and coastal South Carolina, Northern Idaho, and the downtown's of Los Angeles, Seattle and St. Louis. You see my point. So while I celebrate those who’ve been able to build a relationship with one place for life, I've come to appreciate the kind of wide-angle education my family gave me on the differing look and feel of different places, and on the universal gardening/greening instincts you can start to see repeated by people in any location. This week on Cultivating Place, I’m joined by landscape designer, Katharine Webster. Now a resident of California's Bay Area, she grew up in the North East and spent summers on land and water in the 1000 Islands of Canada. She studied art, sculpture, and finally landscape architecture where she became compelled by the interface between the built environment and the landscape, finding power and meaning in the way that thoughtful and creative designers worked in this interface. With gardening internship experience in New York's Central Park and a family member/mentor who from an early age encouraged and taught her to really LOOK at the world around her, Katharine too has had a life offering a wide-angle landscape and garden education. Her early experiences and educational (formal and life education) journey lit a fire in her to shape landscapes.

In life, there are generalists and there are specialists. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re speaking with botanist Dr. Ben Grady about his work with ornamental buckwheats and the upcoming Eriogonum Society conference in Weed, California. While you may not be familiar with the genus Eriogonum, I can promise you, once you meet these beautiful resilient native flowering plants, you’ll know they’re perfect for us generalist flower folk of American West (and all other summer dry regions of the world).

It is full on summer. Perhaps you are in the very middle of summer holidays here at mid-July. If you are like me, there is a special anticipation to the books of summer we choose to companion us on holiday, at least one of which has to be a garden book. The world of garden writing includes lushly photographed coffee table books, how-to books and garden literature, among others. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by British garden design luminary Dan Pearson to hear more about his newest book "Natural Selection: A Year in the Garden." A lovely work of the heart and the mind's eye, this work of garden literature makes for an enriching summer read. I’ll be traveling with a copy tucked into my beach bag this next week when I am on break. In our conversation, Dan shares about the book and his own gardening journey and philosophy. Join us!

Over the past year of Cultivating Place interviews, we’ve heard references to the importance of the Smithsonian Gardens archives for the research of such historians, writers and gardeners as Marta McDowell while writing "All the President’s Gardens", as Andrea Wulf while she was writing "Founding Gardeners" and "The Invention of Nature", and as Ryder Ziebarth as she was working to document and preserve 5 generations of her family working and gardening on one piece of land. This past May, the Smithsonian Gardens – a branch of the Smithsonian Institution dedicated to enriching the Smithsonian experience through exceptional gardens, horticultural exhibits, collections, and education – launched a new exhibition entitled “Cultivating America’s Gardens”. The exhibition will be on view at the National Museum of American History through August of 2018. In honor of our country’s birthday this week, and the hand-in-hand role gardens play in the history of our country – this week on Cultivating Place I’m pleased to be joined by the curator of the exhibit, Kelly Crawford. In the second half of today’s program we’ll be joined by Cindy Brown, Manager of Education and Collections Management at Smithsonian Gardens to learn more about the gardens and their on-going mission and activities. Happy birthday to the United States of America – seems to me an exhibit celebrating our shared garden history is a perfect gift.

This week on Cultivating Place, a conversation with a home gardener who has moved not just gardens, but continents and hemispheres. As we just reached the height of sunlight with our summer solstice, she eased into her winter. She shares a gardening story of learning, community and adaptability. Pen Pender is a gardener, mother, wife, voracious reader, community activist, bee keeper, cook and novice potter living near Mt. Macedon in Victoria, Australia. While I might never see kangaroos in my garden, and she may never hear the sound of a congregation of acorn woodpeckers, we are still gardening together in some sense. As she digs in and looks appreciatively up at winter over there, I dig in and look up in anticipation of a long hot summer over here. Pen shares her story of gardening under Australian skies. To read more or to see more photos of Pen Pender’s Australian garden, go to CultivatingPlace.com. You can download or subscribe to the Cultivating Place podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

Next week – June 28 to July 4 – our country is celebrating American Flowers Week, celebrating American-grown flowers in 50 states. In celebration, Debra Prinzing, the founder of what’s known as the Slow Flowers LLC — who we interviewed last July — has organized a Slow Flowers Summit in Seattle, Washington on Sunday, July 2. There will be speakers and activities – shared food, shared flowers and shared philosophy. It’s been called a TED Talk day for flower lovers. For more information on the summit, please visit Jewellgarden.com for links. In honor of the upcoming celebrations and the many benefits – emotional, economic and environmental — of locally grown flowers, this week on Cultivating Place we revisit an interview from earlier this year with a leader in the flower farmer renaissance underway: Erin Benzakein of Floret Flower Farms. Benzakien is the name and face behind the beautiful and impassioned Floret Flower Farms, based in the Skagit Valley of Washington state. Floret is at the heart of encouraging and educating would be flower farmers on the whens why and hows of getting started and making a go of this new-again small farm based industry which is rooting itself across the country and even around the globe. Erin’s new book "The Cut Flower Garden" – aimed at new and beginning flower farmers — is out now from Chronicle Books. She joins us today via skype from the farm.

In our last Cultivating Place "Dispatches from the Home Garden," we heard from a young gardener experiencing her first garden dislocation/relocation in Sacramento, California. This week – in many ways in honor of Father’s Day — we hear from another home gardener, this time in New Jersey and this time on the same land her grandparents cultivated and which she and her husband, with the steady help and mentorship of her father, became the fourth generation of her family to steward this land after her uncle died and the property went on the market. The 20 years since taking on the family farm has seen a lot of hard work, the restoration of some elements of the homestead and the re-envisioning of other elements. Barns have been stabilized, old rose borders are now mixed perennial beds, and what was once an outbuilding is now our home gardeners writing studio, her father has now died. Other things – including the legacy and spiritual presence of her father – have remained reassuringly similar. Sometimes our gardens are adventure stories in which we are on a vision quest to find out who we are. Sometimes they are our anchors to windward in reminding us who we are and where we came from. Sometimes they are both. Gardener, writer, wife, mother, and daughter Ryder Ziebarth shares her garden journey on Cultivating Place this week. Join us!

This week on Cultivating Place we hear the story of the first 15 years of the Edible Communities – the umbrella name of the many publishers who bring you the edible communities publications across the US and Canada. Fifteen years ago, two women who cared about food, Tracey Ryder and Carole Topalian, published a 16-page, one-color newsletter to help connect the farmers in their area to the food-lovers in their area. That was the birth of Edible Ojai, and the beginning of what is now known as the Edible Communities publications – the rich look and face of local food across North America. Edible Communities, a James Beard Foundation award-winning family of 100 locally owned and licensed magazines devoted to the local food movement, is marking its 15th anniversary this Spring. Since the launch of Edible Ojai (California) in 2002, Edible Communities’ publications have become an influential voice in the food world by keeping focused and passionate about local food, how it’s grown and harvested, what defines regional flavors and trends, and how to prepare and present food in a way that’s rooted in local culture. This week Cultivating Place is joined by Nancy Painter, executive director of the Edible Communities media, from her offices in Maplewood New Jersey to hear more - join us!

Gardening is a specifically human endeavor. It is a characterizing feature of our species, fairly well documented throughout our evolution. Which fascinates me. And each of us come to this endeavor for our own reasons and needs – sometimes very practical, sometimes very esthetic, sometimes spiritual. Our gardens are like some larger version of our very fingerprints. Today Cultivating Place welcomes a home gardening member of the so called “millennial” generation, and self-described Urban Homesteader. Despite having grown up around gardening, she did not begin to really absorb its importance and her own attraction to it until her own early adulthood. Today, she shares with us her journey so far, some of the lessons and highlights, her first experience leaving an established garden, and the opportunities presenting themselves to her in her new garden. Melissa Keyser, along with her husband Matt, have recently relocated from Santa Rosa, CA to Sacramento, CA. After four years spent building and establishing what they imagined to be their “forever home,” their journey has taken a twist. She is blogs about their pursuit of a sustainable urban homesteading life at sweetbeegarden.com. Listening to the story of Melissa and Matt’s gardening and homesteading journey I am struck by a couple of things – the first being that there is little new under the sun, but that the fun part is often part and parcel of discovering and learning some of these things for ourselves. The second thing I am struck by is hope. Each generation of horticulturists, gardeners and plant lovers will necessarily respond to the prevailing social, cultural, economic and political winds of their own moment in time, and for me there is beauty, taste and hope in their resourcefulness and resilience in doing just this.

What do we mean when we use the word “wild” and why does it matter? In 2017, the New York City urban landscape commonly known as The High Line celebrates its official 5th birthday. This milestone is being marked by the publication of a new book entitled "Gardens of the High Line: Elevating the Nature of Modern Landscapes" (Timber Press, 2017), coauthored by plantsmen Piet Oudolf and Rick Darke, with graphic design by Lorraine Ferguson. Oudolf is the renowned plantsman responsible for overseeing the planting design and plant choices, and Rick Darke has documented and collaborated on the project since its inception. "Gardens of the High Line: Elevating the Nature of Modern Landscapes" reflects decades of dedication to viewing gardens through the lenses of cultural geography and social anthropology. The specific garden design and plant choices of these now famed and highly visited gardens is of global interest and a primary focus of the new book. But the philosophy and design ethos underpinning the layered meaning in the book’s subtitle: elevating the nature of modern landscapes - is absolutely as compelling. Author, photographer, philosopher, and landscape ethicist Rick Darke joins Cultivating Place via skype this week to discuss both aspects of the High Line in greater depth. Join us!

Melinda Benson-Valavanis is a floral designer and owner of MCreations in Chico, CA. She recently committed her business to participating in a project called re-bloom – in which she accepts the flowers from a wedding or other large event after the event is over and and re-purposes them for distribution to people and communities who might need a bit of floral energy and cheer in their lives. In this season of extravagant and joyful weddings, graduations, reunions and anniversaries – I can’t think of a better way to pay love and joy forward - and along to its next recipients. Melinda is with me this week on Cultivating Place from the North State Public Radio studios to share more. Join us!

This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Jan Johnsen – a gardener, landscape designer and author of the books "Heaven is a Garden" and "The Spirit of Stone,” both published by St. Lynn’s Press. As a speaker for botanical garden show audiences, Jan loves to share her insights on the beneficial effects of informed garden design. Her unique approach — incorporating ancient practices with contemporary ideas — is entertaining, inspiring and informative. Join us!

Spring is a time of awakening and full sensory immersion in the world around us - even if we aren’t gardeners or nature lovers. It is hard to avoid, ignore or miss Spring’s reckless abundance and generosity. It is the perfect counterpoint to the winter’s restful, healing darkness and dormancy. In appreciation for all of spring’s growing energy, I am pleased to be joined this week by Dr. Raymond Barnett, author of “Earth Wisdom: John Muir, Accidental Taoist, Charts Humanity’s Only Future on a Changing Planet,” which he published in 2016. In this season of worsening news about our health of our world’s climate and ecosystems, and the seemingly ever more threatening nature of political abuse of what few protections we have in place for our water, air and planet’s diversity of life in the pursuit of in misguided financial “gain” - a book like this one catches my eye, my imagination and my heart. In our interview Ray shares the story of how he came to write the book and the his own journey of studying and embracing the ancient Chinese Taoist philosophy and his recognizing its tenets in his deepening study of John Muir over the past 5 years. What results is his comparing of Taoism and John Muir’s separate but interestingly parallel “immanent world views,” in which Ray sees profound hope for the life - and heart - of our world. Once understood and adopted, Ray believes, from this immanent world view - pillaging our earth’s natural resources, abusing or dismissing the equal importance of all of its many life forms, make no sense at all to anyone, no matter your political, spiritual or economic interest. In this "immanent world view” Ray sees “three pillars”: 1. That this earthly world is our true home - there is no better place, this is not a test; 2. that we as humans are equal to, and intimately related to all other living things. Humans are not “higher” and do not have “dominion” but are 1 part of a very complex and interdependent whole; 3. That in all of life there is a critically important balance always being calibrated between opposite energies - light and dark, hard and fluid, female and male, Yin and Yang, and that if any individual, culture, or ecosystem is out of balance and overly dominated by any one energy, then it is not healthy and will not be able to sustain itself over time. It is a compelling and thought provoking conversation - join us! Ray is the author of 7 previous titles, which encompass the varied fields of study for which he has not only deep passion, but also expertise, including: evolutionary ecology, particularly that of California, Natural History, mountaineering, traditional Chinese Language and Culture, mystery fiction and John Muir.

Close to 21 years ago, a Cordon Bleu trained chef and business woman named Jane Scotter left a busy city life in London and bought a farm. She was joined not long after by another professional chef, Harry Astley. Together the two have taken their 16 idyllic acres in Herefordshire, England and crafted a life fully integrated and interdependent with the land, its plants and animals, their food, their own sense of purpose and the energetic cycles of the moon and the seasons. Their farm - Fern Verrow - is not just any farm, it is a biodynamic farm and in 2015, Jane and Harry, with the photographic assistance of Tessa Traeger, produced a lushly reciped and photographed account of their energetic farming journey. I've always been fascinated by biodynamics - its earthy and yet other-wordly attributes and awareness, and I’ve been eager to learn more. As we near that universal and ancient celebration of land and re-growth, May Day, Jane and Harry join us this week on Cultivating Place. Original images by Tessa Traeger, the book "Fern Verrow" is published Quadrille Press.

It is California Native Plant Week this week. Officially designated by the California Native Plant Society in 2010, this year the festivities and educational and awareness activities are scheduled all week April 15–23. In celebration of this and in honor of the many native landscapes I love, and native plants that bring beauty, life and a deep sense of place to my home garden, this week I am pleased to welcome Dennis Mudd to Cultivating Place. Dennis is a retired tech industry CEO and developer of such things as MusicMatch and Slacker Radio. He is also an avid native plant home gardener in Poway – near San Diego. In an effort to improve his own native plant home gardening efforts, five years ago now Dennis teamed up with the California Native Plant Society and The Jepson Herbarium to create the now extensive easy to use, online gardening resource known as Calscape. Join us to hear more!

“Useful, with a pleasant degree of humor” — that is the tag line for the Old Farmer’s Almanac, an annual handbook for American growers, farmers and gardeners — celebrating its 225th year in publication this year. Every year for the past 225 years, farmers, gardeners, landholders and growers of all kinds have been consulting the Old Farmer’s Almanac for weather predictions, growing suggestions and important dates based on — among other things — astronomy. On Cultivating Place this week, we’re joined by Janice Stillman, the 13th editor and first female editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac to hear more. Join us!

If you’re like me, you love getting out into your own garden, but visiting someone else’s garden is almost as good — there’s just less weeding required. The end of March/beginning of April is also the unofficial kick off of garden-visiting season, with garden tours and open garden days on local, regional and national levels, and of all shapes and sizes, getting started now and running right through to November in some parts of the country. While open gardens and garden tours are hosted by organizations large and small, and individuals both famous and obscure, there are few open garden days as well known or well organized across the US than the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Laura Wilson, recent past West Coast coordinator of the Garden Conservancy’s National Open Days Scheme. The 2017 Open Days directory will be out by the end of March letting those of us who love such things know where, when and which gardens are open around the country. Each year my directory has more pages dog eared than the last year. Join us!

Gardenways and "The Chinese Kitchen Garden" - a conversation with gardener and author, Wendy Kiang-Spray I am fairly accustomed to hearing the phrases “folk ways” and “food ways” and even ‘music ways” to describe the history, traditions, and myths associated with these subject areas in distinct locations or cultures. Only recently have I come to think of the history and traditions one brings to the garden or gardening as our “garden ways” – and the garden ways of other people are endlessly fascinating to me as one lens by which we see the world/one lens by which others can learn something of importance about us and who we are. When my children were small, we had a fabulous story book entitled: “The Ugly Vegetables”, written by author Grace Lin, whose parents were Taiwanese immigrants to the United States. In this children’s books she shares the universal concept of what makes us different and what brings us together through a young girl’s uncomfortable recognition that the garden her Chinese mother was growing was very different from the gardens being grown by their neighbors. The girl keeps asking her mother why she is growing such ugly and unusual vegetables when everyone else is growing beautiful flowers and so called “normal vegetables”. Her mother keeps saying – just wait. Ultimately, her mother’s long season vegetables ripen and are harvested and her mother makes the most delicious aromatic soup – the scent of which wafts throughout the neighborhood and brings the neighbors running, bearing gifts of flowers. The whole neighborhood then shares a meal of the amazing soup. The experience of reading this book with my children was transformative for me – and was hands down the first time I was consciously aware of the fact that we all have different garden ways and these are full of rich information. And, as a side effect, I’ve wanted to grow Chinese vegetables ever since. And make something that brings people together. When I saw an announcement about the early 2017 publication of writer, gardener Wendy Kiang-Spray’s first book “The Chinese Kitchen Garden” (2017, Timber Press) I knew I wanted to talk to her. Wendy joins Cultivating Place this week from the studios of NPR in Washington DC.

Sometimes when you use the word garden – people immediately conjure up images of the ornamental perennial border, other people however conjure up colorful visions of the summer vegetable garden. In July of 2016, we were joined by Stefani Bittner of Homestead Design Collective discussing her work as ornamental edible landscape designer. Early in 2017, her most recent and beautiful book, Harvest, was published by 10 Speed Press. Stefani co-wrote Harvest – Unexpected Projects Using 47 Extraordinary garden Plants with Alethea Harampolis. We’re celebrating the new publication and the upcoming growing season by revisiting our summer-time interview with Stefani. Enjoy. Stefani Bitner is co-owner with fellow plantperson, floral and garden designer Alethea Harampolis of Homestead Design Collective based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their newest book, "Harvest - Unexpected projects using 47 Extraordinary Garden Plants" came out this spring from Ten Speed Press.

It is the eve of St. Patrick’s Day and it does seem that even if you’re not Irish per se, St. Patrick’s Day brings out a little bit of Irish in us all. And while I have no interest in green beer, I do have an interest in the green of the garden. To celebrate this – today we’re pleased to be joined by Fionnuala Fallon, a horticulturist, garden writer, garden designer and organic flower farmer, and gardening correspondent for 'The Irish Times' since 2011. Her first book, photographed by her husband Richard Johnston, "From the Ground Up: How Ireland is Growing Its Own" was published by Collins Press in 2012.

Every garden has a story as does every gardener. In our next in the occasional series of Dispatches From the Home Garden, today we travel to the Pacific Northwest and cross the border to Canada, where we speak with a gardener, writer and floral designing flower farmer who joins us via skype. Christin Geall is the founder of Cultivated, an urban flower farm and design studio, and a literary gardening column which appears every two weeks in the Black Press group of newspapers. Christin also teaches creative non-fiction at the University of British Columbia in Victoria. She and I enjoy a conversation about her internationally inspired and trained, thoughtful gardening journey from avid home gardener to professional floral designer, urban flower farmer, and workshop host/mentor. Christin is a gardener who loves a challenge and prefers unusual and old-fashioned varieties of flowers and plants. I love this quote from her: “Appreciate the fact that you wouldn’t be a gardening at all if you weren’t the type to run long on hope. Love this about yourself and let go.”

There is a flower farming revolution sweeping across our country and I for one am all for it. A few months back, Cultivating Place was joined by Debra Prinzing, the founder of the aptly named “slow flowers” and "American Grown Flower" movement in the floral industry. This week we’re joined by Erin Benzakien – the name and face behind the beautiful and impassioned Floret Flower Farms, based in the Skagit Valley of Washington State. Floret is at the heart of encouraging and educating would be flower farmers on the whens, whys and hows of getting started and making a go of this new-again small farm-based industry, which is rooting itself across the country and even around the globe. Erin’s new book "The Cut Flower Garden," aimed at new and beginning flower farmers, is out this month - March - from Chronicle Books.

As gardeners or naturalists, we often share an urge to display our love – flowers or fruits of the season arranged in bottles and vases, in bowls and on platters. The deep beauty of the harvest and the season have a strong call. As gardeners who harvest food and flowers, as nature lovers who gently forage fallen moss, lichen, stones, feathers, or cooks who prepare our fruits, vegetables and foraged edibles we all experience that moment – perhaps daily of saying: what will I put that in? What vase, large or small, what dinner plate, what cake plate, what bowl? Thirty years ago, Frances Palmer answered this question in its various forms with this answer: I will set my table with items I have hand formed from an idea in my imagination, from the energy of my hands from the earth beneath my feet. Almost ever since, her hand thrown and built terra cotta, porcelain and earthenware creations have been sought after by gardeners, cooks, floral and tablescape artists. This week I am joined by Frances Palmer to hear more about the symbiotic relationship between her garden and her art. She joined us via Skype from her studio in Weston, CT.

Late winter early spring might be kind of quiet in the garden in terms of flowers, but it is very busy in terms of plant care – especially in the care of keeping of our roses. Roses are a favorite of many gardeners, a staple of many gardens, they have been cultivated, celebrated, bred and judged for more than 5,000 years around the world. Roses can and are grown just about anywhere in the world. Their history and mythology runs deeply through the roots of cultures around the world. Roses are among the pluralists of the world. They can be ancient or modern, they can be brassy and bright or elegant and understated. They can be edible, native, tenaciously perennial, fragrant, large, small, climbing, cuttable and endlessly arrangeable. The roses have it all. And late winter, early spring is an active time for caring for your roses: everything from choosing and planting bare root selections to pruning and feeding your established roses. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Jolene Adams, a recent past president of the American Rose Society, an active rosarian and dedicated home gardener with more than 150 roses in her Hayward, CA home cottage garden.

Have you ever noticed how every garden has a story? No matter how many gardeners might have worked that spot: just 2 - for instance mother nature AND you, or multitudes: you and the many who known or unknown may have worked that ground before you – the land you cultivate, hike, or gaze at, has a story. Likewise, every gardener has a story – no matter how many gardens they’ve cultivated or at what point in their lives they came to their engagement in gardening or love of natural history - there are stories there. Figuratively, these stories might take the form of haikus, a well-crafted short story, a rambling run-on sentence, or an epic novel. But as Alfred Austin famously said: Show me your garden and I’ll show you who you are. In the first year of Cultivating Place, I heard a good lot of feedback from listeners and friends. One piece of feedback from a friend was this: “I want to hear from real home gardeners, too, what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, how they cope.” I liked the idea of this kind of sharing – a kind of Dispatches from the Home Garden. While every garden and every gardener have this act of cultivation in common, they are all necessarily different in their living details. We all have fingerprints, and they are all unique. I think something meaningful is learned in sharing both our commonalities and our differences. This week we’ll hear from the very friend that sent this feedback/request. She sent it more than once, so it only seemed fair that she would help to craft and kick off our Dispatches from the Home Garden story time. In the interest of full disclosure, she is one of my oldest friends in the world: Christl Findling - satellite builder and home gardener from Lookout Mountain, Colorado. Join us!

“Anyone who’s gazed at the moon or stood still in a magnificent stand of trees knows what it’s like to experience the Power of Awe – it seems to slow time, proffer reverence for life and connect us to one another. Recent research shows that when we spend time outside in nature, engaging all our senses, our heart rates slow, our stress hormones dip, our thoughts grow both more expansive and less self-focused.” This week on Cultivating Place, award winning author Florence Williams discusses her newest book “The Nature Fix – How Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative," which is out on shelves from Norton the first week of February. Having grown up in New York City, Florence went on to spend a large part of her professional writing career, which focuses on science, the environment and health, till now living in or close to the wide open wild spaces of the West - notably Colorado. When her husband’s career took their young family to Washington DC, she found herself experiencing a depression and irritability that ultimately led her to a curiosity about the physical, emotional and intellectual effects of access to nature on not just her but the human body and soul as a whole. The Nature Fix is the story of her researching and reporting on the scientific research going on around the globe into this question. Join us!

Digging deep: this is a phrase that has a wide variety of meanings and uses – both literal and figurative — in the garden, and in the body, mind and heart. In a new year, many of us have a tendency to generate a to-do list of tasks and projects to start, to get in order or to finally this year complete in our lives – and if we are gardeners, our gardens are not left out of this energetic attention and intention. To help integrate some of this energy — shore up your resolve and energize your physical, spiritual and artistic muscles — this week I am joined by Fran Sorin, “best-selling author, unshakeable optimist, coach and CBS radio news contributor.” In 2004, with a well-established career in garden design, garden journalism and garden coaching, Fran published, “Digging Deep – Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening.” In 2016, a new revised edition of the book was published.

It is mid-January. It is deep mid-winter, even in my relatively mild USDA zone 9, Sunset zone 8. While I am fortunate enough to have a year-round Saturday farmer’s market available to me, my own home garden is looking spare. Which is at it should be this time of year, but it could be looking a little less spare while still remaining seasonally appropriate. One of MY New Year’s resolutions is to strive to do a little better on this front. After the calendar year 2016, I would like to feel a little more self-reliant. Call me crazy - I’m starting with adding a few raised vegetable beds to my little home garden. For a little refresher course, I pulled out my trusty-old “The Four-Season Harvest” by Eliot Coleman (Chelsea Green, 1992), which was formative to my first on-my-own adult garden in the 1990s. Today, I am joined by Eliot Coleman, esteemed plantsman, gardener and author based in Harborside, Maine, where he lives and gardens year round at Four Season Farm. Eliot and his wife, Barbara Damrosch (a noted gardener and garden writer herself — perhaps you follow her regular contributions to The Washington Post?) were early proponents and continue to be enthusiastic advocates for growing your own seasonally appropriate, sustainably tended, food year-round — no matter where you live. Eliot is also the author of "The New Organic Grower" and “The Winter Harvest Handbook."

As a celebration of the many ways that one’s cultivation of place can benefit not only the individual cultivator – gardener or naturalist – this week on Cultivating Place I’m joined by John Carlon, president of River Partners, a nonprofit organization working to create wildlife habitat for the benefit of people (economically and environmentally), water (quality and conservation), wildlife and the wider environment (including benefitting agricultural productivity and quality) by restoring successional riparian corridors throughout watersheds of the Western United States.

Happy New Year! For over 100 years Sunset magazine has been inspiring gardens and gardeners in the American West. This year marks the first full year for Sunset’s gorgeous, innovative new demonstration and display gardens at Cornerstone Sonoma. Join me this week when Cultivating Place converses with Sunset’s Garden Editor Johanna Silver - inspiring New Year’s resolutions for garden living. Join us.

There is something inherently satisfying about a full circle – a completion – a beginning brought to its fullness and coming to its natural end, which leads right into the next beginning. This full circle satisfaction is true for cycles of the moon, cycles of the seasons and cycles of the field and garden. For me this is especially apparent at the Winter Solstice and, of course, the full circle of a calendar year. It’s long been customary to celebrate the year’s end by toasting to the old and welcoming the new with a glass of something bubbly – and I decided Cultivating Place should too – but not just any bubbly, rather one that is deeply grounded in this cultivation of place and all its systems and intricacies we find so vital and fascinating. A glass of bubbly that embodies and is as interdependent with the soil, water, wildlife and plant life of place as we are. So what better bubbly than the most ancient of fermented spirits, nectar of the gods — honey-based mead. To that end, and to new beginnings, today, I am joined by Gordon Hull, mead maker and owner of Heidrun Meadery – makers of dry, sparkling mead based in Point Reyes, California.

In this season of the winter solstice — marked by the beauty and appreciative contemplation that mark the celebrations of winter holidays the world around, I very much wanted this week's Cultivating Place to acknowledge the diversity, value and fragility of our native plants and their communities. No matter where you garden or cultivate place now, or where you might have done so throughout your life, the native plants of any place are what signify, identify and root that place as its own. Native plants — ornamental, edible or useful, common, rare or endangered — all cultivation and gardening is based upon the native plants of somewhere. This week, I honor the native plants of my place — the native plants of California, one of the world's biodiveristy hotspots, with more native and endemic plants than certainly anywhere I've lived or gardened before now. To help me in this celebration of the plants of our own places, my guest today is Michael Kauffmann, editor-in-chief of Backcountry Press and author of several books exploring the natural history of some signature plants of the western forest, including — so seasonally appropriate — "Conifer Country, Conifers of the Pacific Slope" and "A Field Guide to Manzanitas,” one of our native broadleaved evergreens. As of January 2017, Michael is also the editor of Fremontia, the journal of the California Native Plant Society.

The famous British gardener and writer Vita Sackville-West stated that no room is ever complete without flowers. This week on Cultivating Place we explore this idea with Vietnamese-born New York Based photographer and writer Ngoc Minh Ngo. Her most recent book “In Bloom – Creating and Living with Flowers” beautifully portrays the imaginative and surprising ways in which 11 different artists and thinkers around the world weave their love of flowers into their everyday lives.

Emily Dickinson references plants, flowers, nature or her garden in more than one-third of her known poems, with many more references in her extensive correspondences with family and friends. Flowers and nature provided her with both “inspiration and companionship.” In celebration of the poet’s upcoming birthday, this week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Jane Wald, executive director of the Emily Dickinson Museum, who’s overseeing current research and restoration of the Dickinson’s historic home garden and conservatory. Join us!

The term “herbal” refers to far more than a soothing tea or tasty spice. An herbal is a book or otherwise codified collection of knowledge about the use of plants for food or medicine. Dating back as far as ancient Egypt, Sumer and China, there are more herbals published every year. On Cultivating Place this week, I’m joined by Stephen Orr, editor-in-chief of Better Homes & Gardens and author of "The New American Herbal," published by Clarkson Potter/Random House in 2014.

Every year about this time, the light wanes, the temperatures drop and we as people draw in a bit, hunker down and begin whatever we can of a winter dormancy. For gardeners and non-gardeners alike, I think, there is a human urge to sometimes craft our garden plants, branches, flowers, seeds, cones and fruit into other, artful and unique creations — for doorways, for gates, for windows, for tabletops. For me this urge is particularly strong in fall and winter. Perhaps it’s an effort to preserve the beauty; perhaps it’s an urge to celebrate and give thanks for the abundance. Or both. For Thanksgiving Day on Cultivating Place, we pay homage to this urge and this age-old tradition when we’re joined by two artists who have an eye, hand and heart for just this kind of craft. Join us as we “gather” and “season to taste” a variety of seasonal plant crafts with gardener, stylist and photographer Caitlin Atkinson, author of "Plant Craft” (2016, Timber Press), and Alethea Harampolis, floral designer at Studio Choo and coauthor of "The Wreath Recipe” (2014, Artisan Books) about the traditional and not so traditional practice of crafting wreaths (and swags and branches). Join us!

As we enter a traditional two-month period marked by celebrations of giving thanks, this week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Qayyum Johnson, farm manager of Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin, CA. Practicing in the Zen Buddhist tradition and farming 7 acres of cool season crops, Qayyum explores with us the connection between the back breaking physical labor of farming and the cultivation of awareness, generosity and thanksgiving in our minds and spirits. Join us!

This week on Cultivating Place, we speak with Steve Van Hoven Chief Arborist and Horticulture Supervisor of Arlington National Cemetery, Memorial Gardens and Arboretum. This historic landscaped national military cemetery sits on the location of what was once the home estate and gardens of General Robert E Lee and his wife Mary Custis Lee in Arlington, Virginia. More than 400,000 veterans are laid to rest there, among many gardens and more than 8.600 trees. In 2015 Arlington was accredited with LEVEL II arboretum status.

Gardens can be important repositories for cultural and environmental history. From the plants included to materials used — you can read a great deal about time and place in any garden. This might be particularly true of gardens created and cared for at the turn of the 19th century in England and the United States — a time marked by the unprecedented expanding financial, journalistic and horticultural wealth of the industrial age. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Gail Read, garden manager of Blithewold, to explore the history embedded in any garden. Blithewold, which is Welsh for “ Happy Wood,” is a nationally significant Country Place Era house, garden and arboretum on Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay.

Gardens and landscapes, gardeners and gardening are integral to our cultural literacy and sense of place and self as a nation. In 1989 Frank Cabot founded the Garden Conservancy in the United States in an effort to preserve exceptional gardens and landscapes for the future. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by George Shakespear of the Garden Conservancy to hear more about its work, including its garden education and conservation mission as well as its dynamic Open Days program, which brings access to many, many other private gardens across the country each year. Several episodes ago, Cultivating Place spoke with the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, California. That remarkable garden resulting from one woman’s passion and dedication became the garden that essentially launched the Garden Conservancy – an American nonprofit organization founded in 1989 by Francis Cabot. The conservancy is dedicated to preserving exceptional gardens and landscapes for the future.