Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden

In our second episode in a series around the healing power of plants and gardens in our world, we get an overview of the professional field of Horticultural Therapy and Healing Garden Design on an institutional basis with one of the field’s leading spokeswomen and researchers, Dr. Naomi Sachs, 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 Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we kick off a series on the Healing Power of Gardens, in the series we’ll visit with Dr. Naomi Sachs, of the Therapeutic Landscapes Network, with Perla Curbelo, a recent graduate of the Horticultural Therapy certification program at the Chicago Botanic Garden, with Iain Houghton, at the Chelsea Physic Garden, one of the oldest extant botanical and medicinal plant gardens in the UK (and world), and with Matt Wichrowski, a horticultural therapy clinician and educator in New York City.

This week, we start off right where we are - in our own gardens, speaking with P. Annie Kirk about Sanctuary and Healing - beginning with ourselves. The whole world is in need of sanctuary and healing - in varying degrees of urgency and from varying kinds of wounds. Annie Kirk of Red Bird Restorative Gardens starts us off with a conversation about the transformative power of the garden, plants, and nature to offer us healing and health - starting in our own gardens, hearts, and minds. 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 Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on CP, we're emboldened to consider our strength and power in the garden and in life generally by Erinn Carter and Georgia Faye Hirsty, two of the co-founders of an organization known as Frailty Myths, based in Oakland, CA.

Their mission is to reimagine femininity and build power by excusing ourselves from the implications, hobbles, and damage wrought by mainstream conceptions of what is naturally feminine or naturally masculine (the dominant ethos of what we know as "patriarchy” and as perpetuated by us all).

At Frailty Myths, they instead model, ask, encourage us to bring our whole heartfelt power and selves into the work of Cultivating our Places - no matter if that is sailing, gardening, woodworking, or singing.

In bringing our open hearts and minds and full power to any situation, we ensure that we are simultaneously cultivating safe and open space for us all. 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 Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

January and mid-winter indeed feels poetic in its spareness, and while many poets come to mind, for me Emily Dickinson stands out for seasonality and abundance in spareness.

In 2004 writer and gardener Marta McDowell published Emily Dickinson’s Gardens – a celebration of a poet and a gardener; Following up on new research and her own experience as Gardener-In Residence at the Emily Dickinson Museum, Marta updated her original work with Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life – The Plants and Places that Inspired the Iconic Poet, which was published in 2019.

Marta joins us Cultivating Place this week to share 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 Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

It's shaping up to be a big news year for Washington DC, so this week Cultivating Place heads to the capital, but we’re there to check in with the gardeners of the region.

Kathy Jentz, AKA The Washington Gardener, is an avid plantswoman, and founder and editor of Washington Gardener magazine, serving Mid-Atlantic gardeners, celebrating 15 years of publication in 2020. 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 Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit WWW.cultivatingplace.com.

As we ring in the New Year of this New Decade with the power of 2020 ours for the making, this week we are welcoming gardener, naturalist, educator, husband, and lily-lover Joe Joe Clark.

Born and raised Vallejo, California to a garden-loving mother, Joe Joe is a naturalist working on interpretation, public engagement and education, and nearly equal amounts of paperwork for the Napa County Open Space district taking him to both state and county parks in coastal Northern California.

He joins us from his home garden to share more about the power of his love for nature - especially the lilies of the field - and the importance of nature literacy.

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 Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

From anecdotal and personal experiences, we know that many gardeners in the world are born of early childhood experiences, while I can’t get every child outside, I can conjure the magic of it things almost as powerfully - I can metaphorically feed children, sing to them, and take them on a field trip through the power of reading to them of all of these wonders and their immeasurable value complexity and beauty… this week on Cultivating Place, we explore the Growing Power of Children’s literature to prepare our seedlings of today for their actions of tomorrow. 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 Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Since time immemorial flowers have accompanied humans on our journeys – this week Cultivating Place welcomes the divine Amy Merrick, writer, florist, international traveler, teacher, and a perennial student of all that flowers offer to us in the way of wonder and learning.

Her new book – On Flowers: Lessons from an Accidental Florist (Artisan Publishing, 2019) – is as humbly and accessibly luxurious as flowers themselves. 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 Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Ken Druse is a gardener and garden writer. This week on Cultivating Place Ken joins us to explore and revel in the scented Side of the garden - the topic of his 20th book The Scentual Garden, Exploring the World of Botanical Fragrance, out now. It’s perfect for winter dreaming, planning, and plotting. 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 Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Dr. Lauren E. Oakes is a conservation and adaptation scientist working to model and communicate how people can adapt at local levels to the GLOBAL climate crisis. Her book In Search of the Canary Tree: The Story of a Scientist, a Cypress and a Changing World is the chosen Book in Common for Chico and California State University, Chico this coming academic year. We revisit our BEST OF conversation with Lauren this week, sharing her journey story and other thoughts on resilience in our changing world, in advance of her appearing at CSU Chico this coming April. 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 Play and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.