Cultivating Place

It’s the height of warm season crops in our gardens here in the Northern Hemisphere, and this week Cultivating Place is joined by Jeff Quattrone – graphic artist, gardener, and heirloom vegetable and seed advocate based in Salem County, New Jersey. Jeff is particularly dedicated to the preservation and sharing forward of the histories and genetics of historic, culturally, and economically important Jersey Tomatoes – born and bred right there in his region for more than a century. In 2014 Jeff founded the Library Seed Bank, which grew into a Southern New Jersey seed library network. Having work with Seed Savers Exchange and served as a Slow Food Ark of Taste’s regional representative and for Slow Food International’s Seed Working Group in 2021, Jeff was the keynote speaker for the Seed Library Summit as well as an organizer of Slow Food’s Seed Summit. Through his heirloom seed and food activism, Jeff’s work is most broadly a deep commitment to seed and food sovereignty for all. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

It’s the height of summer farmers' markets as community hubs, and this week we're in conversation with Cheetah Tchudi co-founder with his wife Sami and his parents, Susan and Steve Tchudi, of Turkeytail Farm, a small diversified organic family farm serving the community of Butte County California.  Cheetah is also the founder and Program Director of Butte Remediation, providing support to home and property owners by testing soils for contamination, targeting the contaminants with fungi capable of remediating those toxins, and measuring success with follow-up fungal tissue and soil sampling. Cheetah, passionate about mushrooms and fungal life, devised this kind of bioremediation support for his region following the devastation of the Campfire of 2018, which burned much of his farm and farm buildings.  Cheetah joins Cultivating Place for a conversation about the importance of small family farms supporting their communities and connection and diversity as strength from a land perspective. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In a month where there is a lot of talk about what it means to be a citizen of this country – this world even – this week we follow last week’s urban garden conversation with another, this time with Karen Kahle Executive Director of the Civic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnati, where for 80 years the Center has empowered gardeners, grown food, habitat, educational programs, and community in abundance. A very Happy first Octogenarian Birthday to the Civic Garden Center - here’s to many more. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

San Francisco Bay Area’s Greenhouse Project is a cultural and economic restoration garden project making use of what we have and growing on it. This week Cultivating Place is joined by Caitlyn Galloway who shares more about the firm belief of this project that Urban Agriculture is essential to building a sustainable future wherever you might live. The Greenhouse Project is an urban agriculture initiative working to restore and repurpose a historic 2.2-acre agricultural site lined with abandoned agricultural greenhouses in the city’s Portola community into a collaborative, visionary hub for food production, education, connection, and environmental stewardship. Caitlyn Galloway is an artist and a gardener, having been involved in urban agricultural projects for the past 15 years in San Francisco, she is the vision and strategy lead for the Greenhouse Project. Listen in! Bio photos of Caitlyn at the Greenhouse Project Site by Jeff Hunt, Storied: San Francisco, all rights reserved. Photos of 770 Woolsey Street, site of the Greenhouse Project courtesy of the Greenhouse Project, all rights reserved. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

K joins Cultivating Place this week to delve into the long view and deep relationships born of the generosity of seed – and seed people - in our garden lives. Ken Greene – who goes by K - is a seed person. He is the co-founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Library, which in 2004 became the first public library-based seed lending library in the US; in 2008 he went on to co-found with his partner Doug Muller, Hudson Valley Seed Company, a seed, and art company focused on heirloom and open-pollinated vegetable, flower and herb seed. Ever more interested in seed literacy, sovereignty, and cultural seed rematriation, in 2016, K and Shanyn Siegel, a seed work colleague, founded the now dormant non-profit, Seedshed devoted to sharing and supporting the cultural, agricultural, and ecological diversity of seed. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

It is really and truly summer now Happy Summer Solstice Season in the Northern Hemisphere. Are your gardens and parks full of the sound and movements of winged life – the fluttering of moths at your white flowers, at the porch or street light each evening? Dragonflies, mosquitos, bumblebees, and flower flies dancing across your flowers and grasses by day? National Pollinator Week is June 20 – 26, and this week we’re in conversation with Dr. Monika Egerer, pollination ecologist at the Technical University of Munich sharing more about the importance of well-designed urban gardens for pollinator support. Monika researches the ecology and management of production-oriented ecosystems in and around cities. She pursues an interdisciplinary research approach that analyzes connections between biodiversity, environmental and climate protection, ecosystem services and social-ecological issues in urban agricultural systems. A strong focus of her work is the role of insects and plant biodiversity in urban ecosystems, specifically in the context of habitat management, urbanization and climate change. Seems that our gardens as contributions to urban biodiversity depend on our viewing them as habitats and our embrace of an “agroecological” in which the focus on production for our needs (food, flowers, control) and the needs of other lives (ecology) is key. As is a little more wildness... Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Teresa J Speight is a Washington DC-based gardener, garden historian, and podcaster under the name of Cottage in the Court. Teri’s new book out from Bloom! Imprint is BLACK FLORA – a gorgeous look into transformative humans of color and creativity at work with flowers. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we consider the idea of mental health and our gardens from an even more poignant perspective. In the wake of the recent Uvalde and then Oklahoma gun violence deaths and tragedies, I wish this was not such a timely episode, but it is. I am joined this week in conversation by Gabrielle Chanel El, Chanae Pickett, and Ezekiel McCarter - founders of the Long Live Love Foundation. Following the traumatic deaths of Gabrielle’s husband and Chanae and Zeke’s father, the Reverend David McCarter in 2011, and Gabrielle’s eldest son and Chanae and Zeke’s brother, Immanuel, several years later, their very personal and lived mission is to support survivors and victims of traumatic violence in part through the solace, sanctuary, and community of a public healing serenity garden in West Oakland, California. As we prepare for Juneteenth 2022 - listen in this week! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

I think it’s nearly impossible to try and stay abreast of current events, and not simultaneously need to remind ourselves to care for our individual mental health - for ourselves, but hopefully to contribute to the sanity of our collective as well. I was so pleased to read last week that at one of the garden world’s biggest show events, London’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show, held the last week of May, judges awarded a gold medal to a garden entitled the mind garden, designed by Andy Sturgeon and supported by Crocus.  With the idea of mental health care being intertwined with our gardens, this week Cultivating Place revisits a best-of conversation from 2020 with British psychiatrist/psychotherapist, researcher, and gardener, Sue Stuart-Smith, author of "The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature", which explores her many years of research and findings on the physiology of the brain and the creativity and connections cultivated in the brain when we are gardening. In this work “of science, insight and anecdote,” Sue demonstrates that “our understanding of nature and its restorative powers is just beginning to flower.” Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As summer arrives, more than 1 million US households are now engaged in gardening – a number that is double what it was before the pandemic. This week we focus on the communal power and importance of local garden information – provided in-person, on-air, in writing, or online, to help grow gardeners. We’re in conversation with Lyons Filmer and Susan Hayes, creators and hosts of "In The Coastal Garden", a bi-weekly community radio program serving their region of coastal Northern California, their joy and passion provide a great region-specific template for anywhere people garden. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

IN the spirit of May, this week we’re headed out in the garden, or down the block, or up the trail for some planty wonder and magic in the company of Bridget Beth Collins – the creative force, glittering vision, and imagination behind the botanical art of Flora Forager. Bridget is a gardener, a mother, and an artist who often brings all three of her life roles together in her work. She founded the Instagram feed and custom artistry known as Flora Forager in the 2000-teens and has since been the author of three books – The Art of Flora Forager, the Flora Forager ABCs, and most recently the Flower Fairy Journals. Bridget joins us this week from her home and garden in Seattle, Washington to share more about the importance of looking at the world through glittering (flowery) eyes. Listen in! 170617-123_480x480.jpg Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Any gardener and their muscles, bones, joints, and ligaments know that gardening is a full-contact sport (or religion), this week we’re joined by Madeline de Vries Hooper and Jeff Hughes, the founders of GardenFit, a new PBS series focusing on a holistic approach to fitness and taking care of your body while you take care of your garden, because as Madeline and Jeff believe: your body is your best garden tool. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

David Rawle is the founder and force (with contribution and support from his wife, Carol Perkins, and a wide variety of community members in Charleston, SC), behind Theodora Park, a public park in Charleston - designed and cared for (with financial and care planning for the long haul) in a way that is reminiscent of the very best of private gardens: it is open, it is both lively and tranquil, it is filled with beautiful seasonal (native and non-native) plants, it offers places to sit, to play, to splash as well as to gather; it offers artful views representative of and inviting for the entire community - residents and visitors alike - human and more-than-human alike. Theodora Park was opened in 2015 and is dedicated to the memory of David’s mother - Theodora. Happy Mother’s Day to all mothering souls and spaces - may all of our gardens, public and private, be welcoming, nurturing – shall we say mothering - places for all. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In preparation for May and Mother’s Day here in the US, we’re in conversation with Lorene Edwards Forkner, a gardener, a writer, a cook, a mother, a daughter, the garden columnist for the Seattle Times, and known as gardener cook on-line. Lorene joins CP this week to share more about her artistic garden-based daily practice for the last four years, which has resulted in the new book: Color in and Out of the Garden, Watercolor Practices for Painters, Gardeners, and Nature Lovers, out now from Abrams Press. The practice and the book are invitations to lean into her own mission statement in life, seen primarily through the lens of the garden: "look closely, with great heart”. A good blessing for all mothering souls in the world. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In honor of Earth Day on April 22nd, this week, Cultivating Place is in conversation about a person who committed their career to the idea, design, and championing of Parks for the Nature of Everyone. April 26th is the 200th birthday of Frederick Law Olmsted – in celebration and recognition, the National Association for Olmsted Parks is joining with celebration partner locations around the US to host Olmsted200 events, reminding us of the long and valuable legacy of Olmsted – which remains highly relevant for us today. To hear more about Frederick Law Olmsted and his influence on our green spaces to this day, Cultivating Place is joined by Dede Petri, Executive Director of the National Association for Olmsted Parks and John Rowden Senior Director of Bird-Friendly Communities with the Audubon Society. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.