Cultivating Place

This second week of May, we welcome gardener and plantswoman Holly Shimizu. Her four decades of work in some of America’s notable public gardens have tracked and traced some of the most impactful changes in public garden standards, expectations, and accountability in that same time frame. From her visionary leadership roles at the National Herb Garden, the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, and the US Botanic Garden to her current board position at the American Horticultural Society, Holly’s garden life is a beautiful public-garden journey that benefits us all. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you...

This week on Cultivating Place we welcome May, with all of her floral and plant profusion, revisiting a conversation we loved with Kristin Currin and Andrew Merritt of Humble Roots Nursery in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge. Acclaimed for their native plant passions, knowledge, and integrity, Kristin and Drew are the authors of the Pacific Northwest Native Plant Primer - one of a series of such primers from around the country steering us as gardeners toward beautiful ecological gardens and place based relationships. Cheers to May and our gardens' weaving us back into the wonder of the world. Humble Roots is...

Juliet Sargeant is an award-winning English garden designer who blends beauty with purpose in every space she creates. Juliet’s unique background in medicine, science, and psychology gives her designs a whole new depth, focusing on wellbeing and connection. You might recognize her name from that time in 2016 when she made history as the first Black Woman garden designer to display at the Chelsea Flower Show, and her design - Modern Slavery Garden, won a Gold Medal and the People’s Choice Prize.  This Earth Day week, we’re celebrating Juliet's design background and digging in to her new book “Start Wit...

In this holy season of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, with the earth reviving herself in greenery and flowers, birds, bees, and butterflies all around us, I am so pleased to be in conversation today with a gardener who will represent another gardener -one in the here now and one from more than a century ago, whose words resonate into the present. I believe in the future, so beautifully. John Stempien is the emeritus director of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum in South Haven, Michigan. He joins us today to share more about his garden life path, following in the...

Debbie Millman has written love letters before. Her 20 years of creating and hosting the popular podcast Design Matters is just one of them. Her many books, several of them established reference books in the design and branding worlds, are among others. I am guessing she’s written a few to her wife the author Roxanne Gay, who contributed recipes to Debbie’s newest book. While I enjoy all good love letters, Debbie’s newest love letter in book form, (launching next week - April 15th) entitled Love Letter to a Garden, is one that definitely caught my eye and ear.  I am going to w...

You might remember Cultivating Place's first conversation with Iowa-based plantsman, Kelly D. Norris, back in 2021, in celebration of his book New Naturalism, designing and planting a resilient, ecologically vibrant home garden. And we’re so pleased to get him back this week in conversation with CP Guest Host Ben Futa to talk more about this current moment in naturalistic design, and Kelly’s newest and very useful book: Your Natural Garden, a practical guide to caring for an ecologically vibrant home garden, which published in January of this year. Kelly is one of the leading horticulturists of this generation, and in h...

This week on Cultivating Place, guest host Abra Lee is in conversation with a horticultural leader with big IDEAs. Mae Lin Plummer is the Director of the IDEA Center for Public Gardens in Denver Colorado. Mae Lin’s journey into gardening started in her backyard in Charlotte, NC where she simply wanted "a pretty place to throw parties." That blossomed into a full-on plant obsession and a major career shift—from banking to horticulture. Mae Lin’s passion is connecting people to the natural world through gardens. Her story is filled with joy, life lessons, and a deep love for how ga...

Happy Spring Equinox! To welcome Spring – especially this exact Spring in the US - practicing re-enchantment in our world seemed exactly the right focus. I think this is part of what Gardeners do: practice enchantment or love with the natural world we care for. We’re in conversation this week with Brooke Williams: writer, naturalist, amateur conservation ecologist, thinker, observer, and walker. Based in the Great Salt Lake region of Utah with his wife, acclaimed writer Terry Tempest Williams, Brooke writes about evolution, consciousness, and his own adventures exploring both the inner and outer wilderness in our world. He is also a G...

Tess Taylor is a self-described Poet Gardener – and if there is ever a season to feel the poetry of life in the garden and with the plants in every cell of your body, it’s springtime! An award-winning poet with many collection titles to her name and editor of the life-supporting anthology Leaning Toward Light Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them, Tess is also the Poet Laureate of El Cerrito, California. In honor of Women’s History Month AND the vernal equinox arriving next week on March 20th,  I thought we could all use some poetic focus. I am so pl...

Dr. Margaret Funk is the curious Midwest gardener (and doctor) behind the online name Flora & Frost. Cultivating her Minnesota garden for years, like so many of us, she really dove in deep in 2020. She and her family have now converted most of their lawn into a vibrant garden with a small greenhouse, raised beds for veggies, ornamental plants, and a growing collection of native plants. As an online communicator herself, Margaret combines her love of gardening with her with her love of science AND laughter. She has a remarkable skill at presenting often complex topics in an accessible, authentic, inspiring...

From East Africa to the World, landscape design's Wambui Ippolito by Jennifer Jewell

In celebration of Black History Month and looking forward to Women’s History Month - this week we’re so pleased to air another of our CP LIVE: Dialogues to Grow By conversations, recorded live in front of an audience on the home ground of the Cultivators of Place with whom we are speaking.  This week’s CP LIVE recording focuses on the paradigm-shifting landscape work of Leslie Bennett, who is dedicated to beautifully designed, edible-plant-rich, culturally rooted gardens for all people AND centering Black Women in the American Landscape. It’s a great pairing. The interview and gathering for it took p...

Many things motivate and drive us to love gardening, plants, and nature. Australia’s Michael McCoy, also known as The Gardenist, is a Gardener, botanist, designer, teacher, and international garden tour guide. In his garden life, motivation always comes back to curiosity. He says: "Behind any answer are 10 more questions leading me forward in the garden, in life!” And, in his garden, "a lot of soul searching goes on." (As it should!) As The Gardenist, he considers his work a “hub for curious gardeners on a lifelong learning curve.” Here, Here! He joins us this week to share more and his enthusias...

The Elizabeth Street Garden in New York City’s Little Italy and SoHo neighborhoods is a one-acre public garden founded in 1991 by Allan Reiver, an artist and art dealer who passed in 2021. The lot on which the garden has grown these many years is owned by the city and managed by the non-profit community group, Elizabeth Street Garden. Joseph Reiver, Allan’s son, is the current director of the group.  Since 2013, Joseph, along with the Garden’s community, has been fighting to preserve and protect this special art and community-filled green space - one of few in this section of the city...

Creativity is one of those anchors-to-windward in unsettled and worrisome times. So is a hands-on, creative project – with bonus points for working with organic materials (natural fibers, clay, or – flowers)! Just in time for Valentine’s Day, and all the spring events cascading from there in the coming months, we’re joined this week by a woman who has artistry, creativity, and hands-on project inspiration in spades to share with us – Passionflower Sue is our guest – and her work might be the end of January inspiration and gift to yourself you didn’t know you needed – but I knew. Passionflower Sue, aka Sue McL...

This week, Guest host Abra Lee is in conversation with legendary topiary artist and star of the HGTV hit show Clipped, Mike ‘Gibby-Siz’ Gibson. Mike is based out of sunny Columbia, South Carolina, where he owns and operates his own business, “Gibson Works.” Abra and Mike talk about all things Topiary arts in their lively conversation! Diving into Mike’s time on HGTV’s hit show Clipped, how he built his company, and where his love of the plant arts germinated. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope...

This week – in the wind, rain, snow, and fires of early 2025 so far – it is good to be able to focus on SEEDs this week – seeds remind us so tangibly of our ability to get small, to slow down into a fortified dormancy of resilience, rest, and regrowth – and the possibilities inherent in all of those states. And this week, Cultivating Place does just that in conversation with Dan Brisebois, host of The Seed Farmer Podcast and author of the newly released The Seed Farmer: A Complete Guide to Growing, Using, and Selling Your Own Seed. Dan’s goal is to get everyo...

Maybe your New Year’s resolution was to take up gardening, or to garden more, or in a new way? Well, this week’s Cultivating Place conversation is all about making time for gardening even for very busy people!  Nicole Burke, the energy force behind the online forum known as Gardenary, is with us to share more about the philosophy centered in her new book: The 5-Minute Gardener. It’s the genius of compounded interest – in the garden. And Nicole’s work focuses very specifically on organic, urban kitchen gardens as a way to improve our individual nutritional and physical lives - and as...

To ring in the New Year, this week on Cultivating Place, guest host Ben Futa is in conversation with Bo Dennis, lead farmer and designer of Dandy Ram farm, located in rural Maine. Dandy Ram is an LGBTQ+ flower farm and floral design studio that sustainably grows and designs florals for weddings and ships evergreen and floral products nationally. Dandy Ram is committed to bringing joy to the world, without ever losing sight of what a just and sustainable relationship with the land and its people looks and feels like, as well as prioritizes. With the concept of new year a...

Happy Winter Solstice season! In celebration of the planetary moment of the longest night and the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, which took place on December 21st, this week we revisit a conversation about getting STILL. We hold a moment of stillness to notice and honor our places, our selves, and our many companions in time and space. We revisit our conversation with Artist/Photographer Mary Jo Hoffman all about her more than a decade-long daily photographic practice and her new book: Still: The Art of Noticing. From my seat, the act of being still and...

This week, CP Guest Host Abra Lee celebrates the season in conversation with the King of Camellias, Sidney Frazier. Sidney is based out of sunny Charleston, South Carolina, where he sits as Vice President of Horticulture at Middleton Place - a historic home and garden there is believed to be the oldest landscaped garden in America. Camellias were first planted in America near the end of the 18th century in the four corners of Henry Middleton's parterre, overlooking the Ashley River. Sidney shares with us the historic legacy of Camellias at Middleton Place and gives us some fun tips and...

Many gardeners are also collectors. Collectors of things like pots, books, seeds, and - of course - plants. Some plant collecting gardeners collect flowers, shrubs, herbs or seeds. Others collect trees – and when writer, artist and curious human Amy Stewart, award winning author of Flower Confidential, Wicked Plants, and The Drunken Botanist, ran into more and more humans who collected trees in various ways – she started to collect stories about them. In her newest book, The Tree Collectors, Tales of Arboreal Obsession (out now from Random House), which she researched, wrote and illustrated, Amy shares much of more about these tree...

This week, Cultivating Place’s guest host, Ben Futa, is in conversation with Katie Elzer-Peters, owner and founder of The Garden of Words, a digital marketing agency for the green industry. Katie is a lifelong plant lover, storyteller, communicator, and artist. An early love for museums and public gardens led Katie to discover what has today become her mission: empowering more plant-based businesses to thrive so that more people can discover the joy of gardening. As they write, the team at The Garden of Words used to grow only plants. Now, they still grow plants, but they also grow businesses. The...

This week, when many in the US have time off with family and friends, we note our gratitude for Public Gardens and green spaces around our country and in our lives. Guest-Host Abra Lee is in conversation with one of North America’s public garden leaders, Paul Redman. As President and Chief Executive Officer of Longwood Gardens for the last 16 years, Paul has implemented institutional and strategic reforms that have positioned the Gardens as a premier horticultural, cultural, and educational institution of the 21st Century while respecting the values of its founder, Pierre S. du Pont. The result has been no...

In honor of the season of gratitude, festivities, long nights, rest, and reflection upon us, this week we revisit a BEST OF conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer, Indigenous scholar, professor, land and culture tender, MacArthur Genius Grant award winner, mother, and all around wonderful human. She is also a gardener. Her book, Braiding Sweetgrass (Milkweed Editions) is something of a philosophical north star for many of us, and this week Dr. Kimmerer's newest book The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World is out from Scribner press. As always with Robin's work, The Serviceberry is perhaps exactly what we...

In our ongoing exploration of who gardeners are, where gardeners are, and all that they are growing in this world, this week in particular I am delighted to be in conversation with a longtime and inspiring plants person. Tony Spencer is the plantsman cultivator behind the Canadian-based endeavor, which for the last decade has been known as The New Perennialist. Under this name, Tony is a writer, a digital content creator, and an ecologically minded, biodiversity-replenishing planting designer self-described as "exploring the frontiers of naturalistic planting and garden design.” An inspired rooftop garden of his was awarded top honors by th...

This week on Cultivating Place, guest host Ben Futa of Botany in South Bend, Indiana, is back, this time in conversation with John Kish in the desert town of Bend, Oregon. John is the founder and owner of Somewhere That’s Green, an indoor plant shop and home of the Greenhouse Cabaret Theatre. Per John’s vision, his work and life are a combination plant shop, performance venue, and community center. As part of the Cabaret, John is also the resident Drag Queen, also known as "Fertile Liza." In their conversation, Ben and John explore John’s lifelong love for plants...

Sometimes our dreams didn’t start out as our dreams. Sometimes, our current dreams were once just seeds germinating in the crucible of time and experience leading up to what is now. For seed farmer Jen Williams, being a seed farmer situated within a small island community was not always the dream. The dream to effect meaningful change in the world around her, started out for Jen in a realm all to prominent for most of us right now – electoral politics and the largest human structures of power in our world. But over time, disappointments, reality check disenchantments and more impo...

Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and W. EB Dubois are some of the many recognizable names of an intellectual cultural and artistic period in American history known as the Harlem Renaissance. This week, CP Guest Host Abra Lee is in conversation with Reverend Jerri Mitchell-Lee. They enjoy a deep dive into the history of Effie Lee Newsome, another highly respected writer - and gardener - of the Harlem Renaissance. Reverend Mitchell-Lee shares more about this undersung American literary and garden figure from her unique familial perspective: Effie is her beloved great aunt. Effie Lee Newsome was a quintessential multi-hyphenate: she...

The wilds of New Jersey might sound like a humorous oxymoron to many – many who don’t live in New Jersey. Humor is one of our guests' great traits this week, along with his deep love of the plants and places making up New Jersey and its wilds—whether scrappy and unlikely roadside verges or extant majestic old-growth forests.   Jared Rosenbaum and his wife Rachel Mackow own and operate New Jersey’s Wild Ridge Plants, an all-native, all-natural, all-nursery-propagated endeavor in Alpha, New Jersey.  Jared is also the face and voice behind the Wild Plant Culture Podcast, and, along with documentary...

This week, we’re so excited to air the first listen to one of our CP LIVE conversations, which were recorded live in front of an audience on the home ground of the Cultivators of Place with whom we are speaking. I am so thrilled to kick the airing of this series off on my own home ground in Northern California - back in conversation with Sandy Fisher and Durl Van Alstyne of Golden State Linen, previously known as Chico Flax. A regenerative fiber project based in California’s North State, Golden State Linen is regenerative fiber farming as a part...

Amanda Thomsen is a horticulturist, garden designer, keynote speaker, freelance writer, backyard consultant, and author living in suburban Chicago. Amanda wants to help the world live more sustainably (but without a load of effort and twice the fun!). Amanda has been a professional horticulturist, landscape designer, and project manager for the past twenty-plus years. Her focus is bringing rule-breaking fun, a little kitsch, and a lot of humor into an industry that is often thought of as stodgy and full of rules. Amanda speaks and gives classes at events of all sizes throughout the United States. Many of you will r...

Dr. Alan Weakley is a career-long botanist and conservation biologist firmly rooted in the southeast region of the U.S. For a little over 23 years, Dr. Weakley has served as the director of the UNC Chapel Hill Herbarium, which since 2000 has been part of the North Carolina Botanical Garden. Throughout his career, from his PhD work to his professorial and director duties and community engagement work, Dr. Weakley’s focus has remained on the rich biodiversity of plants and plant community systems of the Southeast. In his experience, this is one clear way to work toward conserving biodiversity writ large. An...

Erin Benzakein of Floret Flower Farm needs little introduction to most garden-minded listeners. She has been so instrumental is cultivating a flower-farmer and flower-farming economy in our country. Her innovative and dedicated seed research and breeding work of the past almost decade, however, is whole new lens through which to appreciate her work. Back in 2017, when I first interviewed Erin for the program & for The Earth in Her Hands, she was already a tireless advocate for local flowers, and for supporting more flower farmers and local-flower florists in our everyday lives here in the US. Through her on-farm and subsequently...

One day in his mid-adulthood, at a particularly low point after many years of battling debilitating depression, Jarod K. Anderson witnessed the presence of a Great Blue Heron fishing in a creek in the woods near his home. In the opening pages of his new book, Something in the Woods Loves You, he describes the transformative moment of meeting this “poem of ancient slowness” as a “bridge to when nature was family.” Jarod is the poet and nature enthusiast behind the popular scripted fiction podcast The CryptoNaturalist - about real love for imaginary nature. In Something in the Woods Loves You (out...

This week, in honor of Labor Day just passed, we venture into the world of garden preservation, history through the lens of spaces of incarceration, and how these can help all of us consider, with clearer eyes, the great diversity of ways in which the word Garden is used. We’re in conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Lara, a cultural geographer and Garden Historian who is looking at the role and uses of gardens in spaces of incarceration—historic and contemporary—and what this might teach us as gardeners and as a society as we look forward and back. Dr. Lara earned...

At this back-to-school, change-of-seasons moment, I thought we would all enjoy a good bedtime-story vibe. Enjoy this Best of CP conversation with Gwendolyn Wallace.  Gwendolyn Wallace is a gardener, a student, a teacher, a historian, and the author of two new works of illustrated children’s literature. Joy Takes Root, and The Light She Feels Inside (both published this year) are works grounded in the human impulse to garden. In words, stories, and images these additions to the world of children’s literature help to grow us all. Using her own history and experience with gardens and gardening, Gwendolyn’s stories...

This week, A BEST OF conversation. In this long, hot, fiery summer here in Northern CA and wet and windy summer in other parts of the country – I really needed some flowers – and thought our conversation with the UK’s Shane Connolly might be just the thing. ENJOY! As we tend toward summer’s end, with end of summer and fall events and celebrations perhaps in mind, maybe even winter events in the planning, we turn this week to floristry and how and where it intersects with sustainability – and as our guest today shares, with thoughtfulness. British floral designer Shane Connolly is...

It’s back to school time – you can tell by the ads on television and radio (yes, I was watching the Olympics!) and by the displays at the stores with notebooks, pencils, backpacks, and lunch boxes being on prominent display. As you and I know, one of the best classrooms available to us all is the outdoors – from the wildlands of fields, woods, and waysides around us to more formal state and national parks and monuments, our own gardens, and very specifically, our many public gardens. Being outdoors is a great classroom, and plants are among our best teachers. Joining me thi...

Late July, August, and September (the dog days of summer with the constellation Sirius high in the night sky) are perhaps the stretch of the year in most climates of the Northern Hemisphere that really show you what your garden and plants are made of (for better or worse) after months of them producing and growing under long hours of sun, high heat, and either humidity or drought. Or smoke. It’s also the season when many of our most durable and prismatic shrubs are showing off to great advantage in rounded forms, seed, fruit, and foliage colors, certainly in ou...