Cultivating Place

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.