Cultivating Place

This week on Cultivating Place, our final in the Seeds of September series we're joined by Matthew Benson of Stonegate Farm in New York's Hudson Valley, where he is his very own, very small agricultural district sowing seeds to grow other growers. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, the third installment in the Seeds of September four part series– we’re joined by Rowen White, founder of Sierra Seeds a seed and seed advocacy cooperative in Nevada County, Calif. Rowen, a Mohawk woman who serves on the Indigenous Seed Keeper’s Network and is current chair of Seed Savers Exchange, shares with us her love, purpose and poetry of seed stewardship. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, the second installment in the Seeds of September four part series – when we’re joined by plantswoman, seed advocate, farmer and author Ira Wallace of the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and the Heritage Harvest Festival in Charlottesville, VA Sept 20 – 22. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Welcome to The Seeds of September – this week on Cultivating Place we kick off our four-part series in conversation with Jere Gettle of Baker Creek Seeds, and more from the Organic Seed Alliance and Redwood Seeds. I think you’re going to love it! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

They are in your garden by the billions, they are in your food, in your house, and all over your skin. They partner us in all we do and they make all that we do well possible to start with. This week on Cultivating Place we revisit a conversation with science and food writer Eugenia Bone to talk more about her own foray into better understanding the world of the amazing and powerful world of Microbia. It’s a focus that is expanding for us all. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

The right tools can make all the difference in our lives and in our work. This is as true in gardening as in all other aspects of life. This week on Cultivating Place we revisit a conversation with Dorian Winslow, president of Womanswork. Almost 33 years ago now, Womanswork introduced the first work and garden gloves designed specifically for women. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, we spend a little time revisiting our conversation exploring and appreciating the many gifts of darkness with the International Dark-Sky Association. This conversation is from December and the season of Winter Solstice, but I really wanted to revisit it now – in the season not too far past the summer solstice. The nights are short (but lengthening now) and they are warm and we have a tendency to want to stay up and out later than we do in winter. The summer stars, the summer moon, the meteor showers – they beckon us to come outside as much as our morning flowers. Join us to listen to the conversation with Keith Ashley and Amanda Gormley of the International Dark-Sky Association, two passionate people within a global organization working to protect natural darkness as the precious natural resource it is. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, a best of 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. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

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! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

The garden is a full contact playground engaging us at all levels: We can hear, we can taste, we can see and smell - touch and feel. Tovah Martin is gardener and garden writer who explores the truth and the manifold joys of this truth in her new book “The Garden in Every Sense and Season” out now from Timber Press. Tovah joins us this week on Cultivating Place to share more. Listen in! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

The New England Wild Flower Society is one of the oldest native plant conservation organizations in the country and represents the New England states. Their new book Native Plants for the New England Gardens is a perfect reference for their ecological and pollinator garden workshops being held across New England this summer. On Cultivating Place this week, we learn more. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In May of this year, the gardening world – specifically the ecologically based gardening world – lost one of it’s great leaders, Beth Chatto. This August her gardens and educational trust are hosting a symposium to honor her life and her work. On Cultivating Place this week we hear more about the woman and her legacy – join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week we’re joined by two native plantspeople – Julie Nelson and Michael Kauffmann - to delve into the unsettling case of the poached Dudleya this last year here in California – join us as we explore the interesting, sometimes bothersome issues an incident like this brings up for us gardeners. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In preparation for the 4th of July holiday, this week we visit our nation’s capital and the U.S. Botanic Garden. We’re joined by Devin Dotson, exhibits specialist and Nekisha Durrett, a featured artist in an epic summer mural exhibit at the Gardens - join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

On Cultivating Place today we celebrate National Pollinator Week in the US when we’re joined by British biologist, conservationist and Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex in England, Dave Goulson. A gardener and bumblebee expert, Dave is the founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust dedicated to growing the awareness and appreciation for the life and importance of the bumblebees - and all insects of our world - join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

It is now officially summer vacation for most public school districts in the US. Today, Cultivating Place takes a little field trip to visit Sacramento high school teacher Kevin Jordan’s garden program which adds fresh air and fresh thinking in the classroom and out, in all weather and all seasons. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

In the global gardening world, Piet Oudolf is synonymous with a naturalistic planting style - rich in sweeps of grouped flowering perennials (often North American wildflower and prairie plants) and characterized by dramatic seasonal dynamics and ecological grounding . A new film "Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf" opens in New York this month celebrating this man and his work. On Cultivating Place this week, we learn more when we’re joined by filmmaker Thomas Piper. Join us. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word Humane as this: Being characterized by consideration of other, compassionate. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Nancy Lawson author of – The Humane Gardener, Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Entryways of Civility, Pathways of Kindness: A Reflection and Social Justice Garden on the Campus of Southern Connecticut University in New Haven, CT. Originally conceived to celebrate the lives and lights of four women Alumnae of Southern Connecticut State University who were killed while trying to protect the students in their care during the course of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT in 2012. In honor of the intentions of the upcoming Memorial Day weekend and the power of gardens to make the world a better place, we hear more about this new and powerful garden on Cultivating Place this week. Join us. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Unprecedented – Never to Happen Again. This Zen idiom refers specifically to the transient nature of time and each and every moment no matter how seemingly mundane. This sacredness in the everyday is at the heart of our Dispatches from the Home Garden this week when we visit an American tea garden in Tivoli, New York. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Art in the garden, art from the Garden – these are concepts familiar to most gardeners and yet for many of us also perhaps still largely unplumbed. This week, we visit with Iranian-American artist and plant person, Melody Overstreet to speak more about the culture of plant and land based art and the crafting of pigments, inks, dyes and watercolors. Melody shares her cultural, artistic and plant based journey with grace and in a way that interweaves her art with her world view and ethics. Melody will be on the campus of California State University Chico on Saturday May 26th to teach a workshop on naturally crafted, locally sourced pigments for the Friends of the Chico State Herbarium. Link to registration information is at cultivatingplace.com. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

They are in your garden by the billions, they are in your food, in your house, and all over your skin. They partner us in all we do and they make all that we do well possible to start with. Listen in to this week's Cultivating Place, when we’re joined by science and food writer Eugenia Bone to talk more about her own foray into better understanding the world of the amazing and powerful world of Microbia. It’s a focus that is expanding for us all. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

The second best time to become a gardener and nature lover is right now. The first best time, is as a child. This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Nora McDonald and Katherine Somerville of the American Horticultural Society and by Fiona Doherty of Cornell University’s Horticulture Department and Garden Education. They talk with us about the history, impact of hopes of the American Horticultural Society’s Children & Youth Garden Symposium. This year’s symposium is being held in July at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Happy California Native Plant Week! The California Floristic Province is home to on the order of 6,500 native plant species and there are those among us who love and want to ensure the long life of the genetics and habitats of every single one. Today, in celebration of California Native Plant Week, we’re hearing from a selection of those voices, including Native Plant Home Gardener Vincent Bellino. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

On April 13th, Statesman and third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, would be 275 years old. He was also an avid and curious and acquisitive gardener and plant lover. His historic home and garden, Monticello, is an UNESCO Heritage sight, and Jefferson began designing and building Monticello at just 26 years old. With Virginia’s Historic Garden week just around the corner on April 21st - 28th, we’re joined this week on Cultivating Place by two members of Monticello’s horticultural staff, Peggy Cornett, curator of plants and Eleanor Gould, curator of gardens. We’ll explore the legacy of the gardens in all their complexity, depth and scope. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Grow what you love, it’s advice we’re given early in our gardening adventures as to how to choose what to plant, to tend and to pray over. Grow the food you love to eat, grow the flowers you love to look at or smell, grow the tree whose canopy you’d like to rest beneath. "Grow what you love" is also the title of Emily Murphy’s new book. A Northern Californian gardener, mother, educator and optimist – Emily’s my guest on Cultivating Place this week. Join us. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Have you ever thought: that is just what the mountains taste like? That is just what the forest or the ocean must taste like? For wildcrafter Pascal Baudar, author of The New Wildcrafted Cuisine and The Wildcrafting Brewer, from Chelsea Green Publishing, what his place tastes like in a specific season is at the heart of his food and garden. Baudar works as a wild-food researcher, wild brewer, and instructor in traditional food preservation techniques. Over the years, through his weekly classes and seminars, he has introduced thousands of home cooks, local chefs, and foodies to the flavors offered by their wild landscapes. In 2014, Baudar was named one of the 25 most influential local tastemakers by Los Angeles Magazine, and in 2017 his instructional programs, taught through Urban Outdoor Skills, were named one of the seven most creative cooking classes in the L.A. region. Pascal Baudar joins Cultivating Place this week. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Nurturing – that’s what comes to mind when I think of the work of Blanca Diaz also known as Mama Maiz. Blanca is a practicing doula and herbalist whose work takes her around the country teaching and practicing plant based healing. She nurtures new mothers as they prepare to bring new life into our world, and she nurtures plants for their wisdom, healing and beauty. She nurtures community from the ground up sharing, as she says: “what she has been called and given permission to share.” Blanca believes in, studies and shares with others the power of plants, especially the native plants of our own regions and our relationships to them, in an effort to bring healing, well-being and greater understanding into our lives. Mama Maiz shares with Cultivating Place this week. Join us! For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, a conversation with Maria Failla, the host of Bloom & Grow Radio – a unique podcast from New York City designed specifically for indoor plant people, urban jungle dwellers, houseplant enthusiasts and succulent killers alike. Join us!

Benjamin Vogt is a next generation student of the beloved conservationist and writer Aldo Leopold and a passionate nature and garden advocate himself. In his book “A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion For An Uncertain Future” he takes the essence of Leopold’s "A Land Ethic" and brings it home to our gardens in some surprising and sometimes challenging ways. Vogt addresses why we need a new garden ethic, and why we urgently need wildness in our daily lives — lives sequestered in buildings surrounded by monocultures of lawn and concrete that significantly harm our physical and mental health. He examines the psychological issues around climate change and mass extinction as a way to understand how we are short circuiting our response to global crises, especially by not growing native plants in our gardens. Simply put, environmentalism is not political, it's social justice for all species marginalized today and for those facing extinction tomorrow. By thinking deeply and honestly about our built landscapes, we can create a compassionate activism that connects us more profoundly to nature and to one another. Join us for Cultivating Place this week to hear more. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com. The show is available as a podcast on iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This week on Cultivating Place, Designing with Palms – in the heart of Spring Break season where those of us in colder climes might be longing for a warm, sunny, palm punctuated beach, we dig into this remarkable plant family and get above and beyond its symbolism and closer to its truer history and essence. Photographed by Caitlin Atkinson and written by Jason Dewees, the staff horticulturist at Flora Grubb Gardens and East West Trees in San Francisco. Responsible for the Tree Canopy Succession Plan for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, Jason serves on the Horticultural Advisory Committee for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, and on The San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers Advisory Council. Join us!

Most gardeners - of the indoor or outdoor variety - love (and covet) a good pot. For house plants, for focal points, for cut arrangements, for … well, just for the love of them. We might even be known to over-collect, over-indulge, over-spend, and overly adore the best of our pots. And I am a gardener taken with the handcrafted pots of Claire Bandfield, a self-taught artist living in Camas, Washington. Originally from Portland, she started making hand cast stone pots for her garden. The planters, made from Portland cement, sand and organic materials, resemble the limestone rock tufa and their distinctive luminous grey-stone tones are lovely counterpoints to anything green. With an appreciation for creating organic objects, Claire’s often simple but elegantly curving forms are inspired by modern architecture and traditional Japanese gardens. The pots will turn green and establish an aged appearance when left outside as the planters attract moss and lichens. Join us this week to hear more of Claire’s garden and container gardening journey.

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. For photos visit cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we talk land and water with Hunter Ten Broeck of WaterWise Landscapes Inc. in Albuquerque, NM. No matter where we live, or how differently our land and our water supplies and sources may look, our gardens and our nature love are wholly interdependent with these two much larger elemental forces. For 25 years Hunter has been working in his garden design, garden crafting and educational advocacy to improve people’s relationship to and understanding of their own land and water. February 22 and 23, Hunter will be part of a the annual Land and Water Summit, produced by the Xeriscape Council of New Mexico. This year the theme is: The Ripple Effect - Stormwater and Tree Canopy. There’s lessons here for all of us, no matter where we live. Join us!

Danger! Home gardener, garden communicator and blogger Loree Bohl, loves a garden with stand-out foliage and bold form. But pay attention to where you’re going, or as her mail carrier and her little dog Lila both know - it can be dangerous out there! As Loree writes on her blog: "Nice plants are boring – my love is for plants that can hurt you. Agave, yucca, anything with a spike or spur!” Join us this week for the next in our series of Dispatches from the Home Garden on Cultivating Place.

Last week we talked "Little House on the Prairie" and this week we visit the grassland prairies and plains of Kansas. According to the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas and the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower center in Texas, Tallgrass prairie once covered between 170 to 250 million acres of North America – making it the largest ecosystem in the country. By 1860, the vast majority was developed and plowed under. Today less than 4% remains, mostly in the Kansas Flint Hills. We’re joined in conversation by Brad Guhr, education coordinator and prairie restoration ecologist for the Dyck Arboretum of the Plains in Hesston, Kansas. To learn more about this inspiring ecosystem based landscape. Join us.

This week on Cultivating Place, we’re celebrating the February 7th birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder with Author and historian Marta McDowell. Her newest book is: "The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Frontier Landscapes that Inspired the Little House Books” (Timber Press, 2017) – a surprising plant and environmental journey. Laura Ingalls Wilder is a name familiar to most Americans born and raised in the 20th century. Her “Little House on the Prairie” series of children's books released from 1932 to 1943 were works of fiction based on her childhood in a settler and pioneer family, in a time of rapid Westward Expansion and white settlement. The books were incredibly popular in their day and when they were made into a well-loved television series in the 1970s and 1980s they caught the imaginations of a whole new generation of readers. Certainly if you were a girl born in the second half of the 1900s in the US, you knew exactly who Ma, Pa, Mary, Carrie and Laura were. What you might not have been as aware of as a reader of the books in your formative years, was just how much ecological, agricultural and gardening information and history your were receiving wrapped up in these engaging human stories. Marta McDowell is an historian and author. Her books include “Emily Dickinson’s Gardens” and “Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life”, as well as “All the Presidents’ Gardens”. Her most recent book is “The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Frontier Landscapes that Inspired the Little House Books”. An historical and ecological exploration of a very specific time and place in American History, the book was published by Timber Press in 2017. On February 7th, Laura Ingalls Wilder would be 151. Join us!

This week on Cultivating Place our next in the occasional series of Dispatches from the Home Garden - this time through the lens of a regional newspaper's gardening columnist. Every region needs a paper and at least 1 regionally knowledgeable gardening columnist - Laura Christman was that person in Redding, California for the many years of her long career. "Perhaps you are familiar with the term "gardening." It is a tangle of weirdness. Turns out there's more to it than growing a lovely lawn or prolific pepper plant. Planet Pomegranate is a collection of columns written by journalist Laura Christman for the Home & Garden section of the Record Searchlight, the daily newspaper in Redding, California. The pieces are a mix of conversations, observation, reflections and frustrations…..and pomegranates." Join us!

This week on Cultivating Place we start off the new year with some thoughts on life and our gardens as feasts for the senses, with an eye toward life-long learning and encouraging our own senses of adventure - with purpose. Sarah Statham of Simply by Arrangement has a passion for bringing fine seasonal flowers (grown, arranged and photographed) to the North of England – and the world. She shares with us her thoughts on process, on resolutions and on enjoying at least a short season of rest if you can. Join us.

Georgia O’Keeffe is known as the innovative mother of modernism in the art world. She was also a gardener. O’Keeffe's garden in Abiquiu, NM has always moved me as a visionary, gardener’s garden - one of those gardens of the mind, the hands, the heart and a place. To end 2017 with a flourish, exploring the nature of this human gardening impulse, and entering our own next turns on this great globe, we visit this visionary woman’s beloved garden. Join us.

This week on Cultivating Place, a lesson in garden history seen through the lens of holiday decorations and traditions from seasons past when we’re joined by Laura Viancor, Head of Horticulture, from historic Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia. Join us for the greens and other festive things. Happy holidays.

This week before the Winter Solstice, Cultivating Place is exploring and appreciating the many benefits and beauty of winter’s bountiful darkness – in our gardens and in our wildlands. Join us to listen to the conversation with Keith Ashley and Amanda Gormley of the International Dark-Sky Association, two passionate people within a global organization working to protect natural darkness as the precious natural resource it is.

This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by gardener, author, activist and entomologist, Doug Tallamy. Ten years ago, his first book "Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in our Gardens," made clear how important our own home gardens and landscapes COULD be to improving the outlook for insects, birds and all other wildlife – indeed for the very future and health of our planet. Join us.

As we knock on the door of December, and the garden and its greenery call out to us in very different ways than they do in other seasons of the year, this week on Cultivating Place, we speak with British Gardener, Horticulturist and Floral designer Thomas Broom-Hughes of Thomas Bloom floristry and Petersham Nurseries. He has garden-gathered visions of luxurious winter beauty and traditions to share. Join us.

The late autumn into winter months – from the Harvest Moon rising in October to the Winter Solstice on December 21st and through the beginning of the new calendar year, mark traditional seasons of gratitude, of giving thanks, and of offerings of generous service. For me, my garden itself and my gardening practice are my very best, most consistent acts of both gratitude and service to the world – and I know many other gardeners and cultivators who feel the same. The garden – very much like the grace that writer and thinker Anne Lamott references — rises to meet many gardeners where we are and — sometimes — it does not leave us where we started, but nurtures us along further than we believed was possible. This week on Cultivating Place I am so excited to offer you our first ever seasonal special celebrating this SEASON of harvest, of taking stock, of giving back, of deep GRATITUDE and of preparing for the restorative dark of winter ahead. In this one hour of gratitude and gardening practice and celebration, gardeners from around the world share with us what gratitude in the garden looks like to them. And, our central conversation will be with earth artist Day Schildkret, who makes meaning and beauty with his daily practice of Morning Altars.

The right tools can make all the difference in our lives and in our work. This is as true in gardening as in all other aspects of life. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Dorian Winslow, president of Womanswork, a 35-year-old company which almost 33 years ago now introduced the first work and garden gloves designed specifically for women. Join us.

The 13th century Persian poet Rumi famously wrote: “Let the beauty you love be what you do, there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” Ryland Engelhart and Finian Makepeace took these words to heart and in 2013 founded Kiss the Ground. Named in honor of the famed poem, Kiss the Ground works to restore soils worldwide by promoting and developing models that accelerate the adoption of regenerative agriculture — large scale and home scale. Healthy soil has the miraculous ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, and it’s not just carbon storage; the ways that soil stands to positively impact lives of billions worldwide are tangible and immediate: Clean water. Healthy food. Drought resistance. Restored habitats. You can download or subscribe to the Cultivating Place podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. For additional photos and more, visit CultivatingPlace.com.

Nurturing – that’s what comes to mind when I think of the work of Blanca Diaz also known as Mama Maiz. Blanca is a practicing doula and herbalist whose work takes her around the country teaching and practicing plant based healing. She nurtures new mothers as they prepare to bring new life into our world, and she nurtures plants for their wisdom, healing and beauty. She nurtures community from the ground up sharing, as she says: “what she has been called and given permission to share.” Blanca believes in, studies and shares with others the power of plants, especially the native plants of our own regions and our relationships to them, in an effort to bring healing, well-being and greater understanding into our lives. Mama Maiz shares with Cultivating Place this week Join us. The show is available as a podcast on iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. For photos and more, visit CultivatingPlace.com.

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! You can download or subscribe to the Cultivating Place podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

No matter where you live, the native plants of that area help define the beauty, history and meaning of all life there – from the soil, to the birds and bugs and mammals – four legged and two legged. On Cultivating Place this week we’re joined by the California Native Plant Society to hear more about the state of our native plants and their upcoming Conservation Conference Jan. 30-Feb. 3, 2018. Join us! Read more and see additional photos at CultivatingPlace.com.