Cultivating Place

On Cultivating Place this week we talk with Mary Pat Matheson and George DeMan, the current president and founding president of the Atlanta Botanical Gardens respectively. In April of this year, the Atlanta Botanical Gardens are reprising one of their most popular exhibits of all time: fine art glass sculptures by artist Dale Chihuly throughout the garden. Both of our guests, as well as the artist Dale Chihuly, bring different — and not particularly plant-based — perspectives on how art in gardens and gardening can bring meaning and enjoyment to those who experience them. If there is one plant group all three people have in common, it might be the bright spring woodland color of native Rhododendrons and azaleas.

Sometimes our understanding of what gardening or a garden are can be expanded just by asking for someone else’s history and understanding of these terms. This week on Cultivating Place, we're joined by Dr. Elizabeth Hoover — gardener, beadworker, fancy shawl dancer and professor of American studies at Brown University.

If seed is the beginning and end of all plant life, soil is the place that most seeds call home. Soil then is a foundational aspect to any garden a very important place for all of us to cultivate consciously. This week on Cultivating Place, our conversations on what gardens and gardening mean continue with Deborah Koons Garcia, writer, director and producer of the full-length documentary "Symphony of the Soil," a feature presentation at CSU, Chico's This Way to Sustainability Conference. The film will show at noon Friday, March 25, with Garcia in attendance to introduce it and answer questions following.

“Seed draws you in,” says Micaela Colley. “They capture your imagination,” Kalan Redwood adds. Seeds are the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of most plant life. This week on Cultivating Place we’re joined by Micaela Colley, Executive Director of the Organic Seed Alliance based in Port Townsend, WA and Kalan Redwood of Redwood Seeds in eastern Tehama County. Redwood Seeds is a member of the Organic Seed Alliance's national network of organic seed growers. They provide us with environmental health, food, utility and incredible biodversity supporting all manner of life – join us to hear more about maintaining their integrity, diversity and supply.

This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Daniel Atkinson — teacher, student, scholar of the African American Diaspora and Jazz and Rhythm and Blues music and dedicated home gardener. Currently gardening in Puyallup, Wash., Daniel shares his thoughts on saving and sharing the seeds handed down to him by his ancestors — some of which have been in his family for more than 200 years. He also discusses the connection for him between music, surfing, gardening and life.

The first official day of spring is right around the corner, and among other things that means we're in the heart of flower and garden shows around the country. This week, we speak with Sam Lemheney, Chief of Shows and Events for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which annually hosts the famed Philadelphia Flower Show. The longest-running horticultural event in the country (not counting Spring herself), the Philadelphia Flower Show is a pilgrimage destination for many horticulturists and gardeners around the country.

This week our guest is something of a renaissance man. A Colorado native of Greek descent, Panayoti Kelaidis has a background in Chinese literature and as a computer systems analyst in addition to being an expert in — and enthusiastically curious about — most things that photosynthesize and contain chlorophyll.

Cultivating Place: Gardening, Designing and Living With Lorene Edwards Forkner by Jennifer Jewell

For more than 25 years, Julie Moir Messervy has inspired gardeners, readers and thinkers with her garden designs and her garden philosophy. She inspired host Jennifer Jewell years ago when she first read her book “The Inward Garden.” In our interview we hear about her education as a gardener, her seminal work as a designer and some of her deeply held beliefs, including that “deep within each of us lies a garden.”

This week on Cultivating Place, the program’s conversations begin with Bernard Trainor, the Australian-born landscape designer. Known for his iconic California gardens, Trainor is both a hands-on gardener and a big view, large concept designer. His philosophy and work illustrate the power of specific place in any garden or cultivated landscape — no matter how big or small, urban or rural.

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

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

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.