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

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

By Jennifer JewellSociety & Culture
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Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden episodes

  • Artober & CP Live, "Invisible Neighbors" with LA-Based Studio Tutto
    Welcome to our next airing of a CP LIVE* conversation, this time in celebration of Artober in conversation with Sofia Laçin and Hennessy Christophel, of LA-based Studio Tutto.
    On highway underpasses, school walls, public park welcome centers, and city water towers, the epic hand-crafted murals of Studio Tutto tell visual stories of invisible nature to help people connect and become familiar with what is surrounding us, but we often do not notice.
    Their “thoughtful site-specific pieces invite and incite softness and meaningful connection between people and place, and in so doing, they are “optimistically shaping the way we see ourselves and the world around us.”
    The interview and gathering for it took place around this same time last year, when Studio Tutto’s Mural “Invisible Neighbors” was completed and unveiled for the first time as a centerpiece for the Welcome Center at LA’s storied Griffith Park, one of the largest municipal parks embracing urban wilderness in the United States.
    With over 4200 acres of both natural chaparral and landscaped parkland, it is a complex and interesting refuge for humans, wildlife, and plant communities. Situated in the arid eastern Santa Monica Mountain Range, the park features varied topography and diverse plant communities, including coastal sage scrub, oak, and native walnut woodlands, as well as riparian creek vegetation and deep canyons.
    It is an ongoing experiment in how humans and wildlands intersect, interface, and, in the best-case scenarios, strive for a compassionate coexistence. One celebrated example of this struggle is the life of a mountain lion who spent his adult life in the park, became beloved by the world, and ultimately died there.
    When Studio Tutto was commissioned to create one of their powerful murals for the reopening of Griffith Park’s historic welcome center, after much research and thought, their mural became “An artistic [visual] altar to the spirit of P-22 [and his last wild place].”
    The mandate for me in these CP LIVE experiences and interviews is to not only give voice to (as the podcast always does), but actually make visible the many diverse connections animated by the gardening impulse everywhere.
    What this conversation makes visible to me, and I hope to all listeners, is that gardening is a multifaceted act – it is physical, it is intellectual, it is artistic and imaginative, it is tangible, and symbolic. It is one lens and method by which we know nature, and by which we participate in the nature of the world, and the nature of ourselves.
    Through their larger-than-life art (or maybe it’s art trying to meet a truer scale of life’s enormity?), and the nature it brings into our view, Studio Tutto is growing, painting, and weaving the beauty of the sacred presence of nature back into everyday human places, and they are weaving humans back into nature’s places, like Griffith Park.
    Are artists gardening our world? These artists are. The more we see and support the incredible diversity of who Gardeners are, what they grow, and what Gardens mean, the better we grow our world.
    ENJOY this artful conversation with Hennessy and Sofia!
    *CP LIVE is a series of 10 CP conversations recorded and filmed live on the home ground of, and in support of, the cultivators of place with whom we are in conversation. These events, and the upcoming documentary series, are filmed by Myriam Nicodemus and Khoa Huyhn of EM EN in South Bend, IN. The series was made possible in part by funding from the Catto-Shaw Foundation.
    Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place.
    We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these.
    The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.
    1 hr 15 min
  • ARTOBER: An Artful Life with Flowers, Frances Palmer
    In a world that needs a great deal from us right now, we can almost never go wrong by igniting our creativity.
    This week on CP we dive deeper into ArtTober in conversation with one of our favorite creatives, artists, gardeners, writers, teachers, and flower lovers.
    We’re speaking once again with writer, photographer, and potter Frances Palmer about her new book Life with Flowers, inspiration and lessons from the garden (2025, Artisan), a sort of Masterclass in growing, arranging with, and loving the art of flowers.
    A previous guest on the program, one of the 75 women featured in my book The Earth in Her Hands, Frances, is a fantastic inspiration for any creative gardener-maker out there! Listen in!
    Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place.
    We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these.
    The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.
    1 hr 1 min
  • Kicking off ARTOBER ON CP, Wild By Design, the Art of Planting with Ben O'Brien
    This week on CP, we kick off ARTOBER. Host Ben Futa is talking all things Wild By Design, the Art of Planting. He’s in conversation with Ben O’Brien of Wild By Design, who creates "artfully crafted, richly planted, lovingly tended gardens".
    Based in Ontario, Ben O’Brien believes that the best gardens captivate, delight, and deeply resonate with people; they respond to, reveal, and amplify the magic of a place; and they are those born from a genuine love of plants. Join us!
    Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place.
    We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these.
    The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.
    56 min
  • The Hidden Histories of Garden Legacies, with Rose Vincent Resource Librarian NYBG
    This week on Cultivating Place, in honor of this first week of Autumn, and the idea of passing time, looking back, and the importance of memory and history, host Abra Lee welcomes someone whose work reminds us that gardens are not only grown in the soil but also in the stories we keep and share.
    Abra is in conversation with Rose Vincent, Resource Sharing Librarian at the New York Botanical Garden’s renowned Mertz Library. Rose helps make one of the world’s greatest collections of botanical knowledge accessible to people everywhere.
    Through her work, Rose ensures that plant lovers, researchers, and communities can connect, which links us through the living history of plants, gardens, and the people who tend them. She’s also a curator and collaborator on creative exhibits, such as Dead Formats, which explore the various ways humans have recorded and shared their relationship with the plant world.
    Rose’s work reminds us that libraries are not quiet, static spaces, but vibrant, growing gardens of knowledge — alive with connection, curiosity, and care. Rose is a librarian, a connector, a storyteller, and a keeper of botanical memory. Listen in!
    Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place.
    We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these.
    The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.
    All photos Courtesy of Rose Vincent & NYBG, all rights reserved.
    55 min
  • The Adventurous Art of Cultivating Place, with Peg & Awl
    This week on Cultivating Place, we lean into the Art of CP, exploring how the act of Cultivating Place is artful, and how Art can be one our most beautiful acts of Cultivating Place.
    How acts of Cultivating Place and acts of making Art both offer us the agency to create new worlds, or new versions of our current world.
    These human impulses are simultaneously miraculous and represent the endless variations on life modeled to us by this world.
    We’re in conversation with the deeply placed, curiosity, and art-based duo of Margaux and Walter Kent – visionaries behind the artful life resource known as Peg & Awl.
    They’re joining us from their home, shop, studios, and five-acre wood in West Chester, PA. As Walter shares: “When I am not making something or making a place to make something, I feel lost or confused.” As Margaux writes: “The world is bursting with magic, and for anyone looking, it positively pulses!”
    These two truths are among the many gifts given to us through our Cultivating Place and Artful practices. Listen in!
    Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place.
    We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these.
    The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.
    1 hr 10 min
  • Great Green Heights: Cincinnati's Green Roofs and Rooftop Garden with Rose Henry Seeger
    In 2008, Cincinnati, Ohio, developed the program that has earned it the nickname: Green City. The Green Cincinnati Plan (GCP) is a now-17-year-running community vision updated regularly to address climate change and build a more sustainable, equitable, and resilient future for its citizens.
    2008 was also the year that garden/grower by nature and engineer by profession, Rose Henry Seeger, was introduced to the amazing concept of Green Roofs as a way to make architecture integral to a more sustainable and healthy urban future. Green roofs provide positive and healing benefits for both the environment and its people, brought Rose’s interest in growing and engineering together.
    She’s never looked back since founding Green City Resources, a Cincinnati-based, woman-owned company specializing in the design, installation, and maintenance of stormwater management systems; bioretention, vegetated / green roofing, rainwater harvesting, and native/sustainable landscaping.
    Many of their gardens do all of this as well as being healing and horticulture therapy gardens. This is Cultivating Place at elevation. Enjoy!
    Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place.
    We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these.
    The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.
    57 min
  • Mum's the Flower of Fall, with Jessica Hall of Harmony Harvest Flower Farm
    This week on Cultivating Place, we celebrate late summer and fall on the horizon in conversation about one of fall’s stars in the garden… past, present, and future.
    CP host Ben Futa is in conversation with Jessica Hall of Harmony Harvest Flower Farm, based in Weyers Cave, Virginia, to explore their "Mum Project," which aims to revive chrysanthemum production in the US by preserving, sharing, and evaluating heirloom/heritage mums.
    On On November 13th, 2025 Harmony Harvest's annual Virtual Mum Summit returns, bringing together growers, designers, and flower lovers for a full day of inspiration, learning, and fun. Listen in!
    Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place.
    We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these.
    The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.
    58 min
  • Seed Your Future, with Jazmin Albarran
    This week on Cultivating Place, host Abra Lee dives into the world of pathways to plant professions with Jazmin Albarran, executive Director of Seed Your Future, a non-profit whose vision is a world where Everyone understands the power of plants and is aware of the promising careers in the art, science, technology, and business of horticulture.
    Horticulture is the art, technology, and science of plants. It is the food we eat, the landscapes we live and play in, and the environments we thrive in.
    It is the business of managing and utilizing what we grow while maintaining the health of our soil, air, and water, as well as the well-being of our children, communities, and the world. In short - it's all about plants!
    Every day, the plant world is quietly led by horticulture heroes and plant champions who make an enormous impact on our lives and the future of the planet.
    Through their online, in-person and year-round programs, including the Horticultural Heroes stories shared, the Immersive Learning for High School Educators, Green Career Week (coming up October 6 - 10, 2025), Seed Your Future aims to share stories, promote horticulture, and inspire more people to pursue careers working with plants. Listen in!
    Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place.
    We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these.
    The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.
    54 min
  • The Generosity of an Orchard: The Giving Grove
    As autumn and harvest begins to color the edges of our awareness, this week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by two people whose work is all about perennial and abundant harvest as represented by the concept, and the endless generosity, of an Orchard. 
    The Giving Grove, based in Kansas City, lives a purpose of providing healthy calories, strengthening community, and improving the urban environment through a nationwide network of sustainable little orchards.
    Jennifer is in conversation with the Giving Grove’s Co-Executive Director, Ashley Vernon,  and Ryan Watson, the National Orchard Operations and Education Manager, who share more about their work nurturing communal orchardists across the country in 16 sites and 650 little orchards with big impact. Listen in!
    Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place.
    We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these.
    The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.
    1 hr 18 min
  • Back to a Source: the Somme Prairie Grove Nature Preserve
    Looking back, even just this year, Cultivating Place has had multiple conversations with plantspeople from around the country about the inspirational plants from, and places known as, prairies.
    An iconic and beloved ecosystem strongly identified with the American Midwest. As summer warms and mellows into its Augustness, we’re in conversation this week with two humans who are cultivating their place with the specific purpose of keeping native extant prairie alive and thriving.
    Stephen Packard and Eriko Kojima of the Somme Prairie Grove Nature Preserve in Illinois join CP today to share more about their prairie place. In the summer of 2021, the Forest Preserves of Illinois’ Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a resolution recognizing Somme Prairie Grove as the 27th dedicated Illinois Nature Preserve managed by the Forest Preserves of Cook County.
    Part of the Somme Preserves located in Northbrook in north Cook County, Somme Prairie Grove offers 85 acres of high-quality mesic savanna and dry-mesic woodland. The site supports many conserved native plant species, and savanna and shrubland breeding birds.
    Somme Prairie Grove has benefited from a vibrant stewardship community—led by the North Branch Restoration Project—since 1980 and represents one of the oldest and most comprehensive savanna and woodland restorations in the Midwest.
    The recovery of Somme Prairie Grove is credited to the longstanding participation of this cohort of dedicated and talented community volunteers, including both the volunteer who kicked it all off, Stephen Packard, and a volunteer since 2015, Eriko.
    In this back-to-school moment here in the U.S. let us remember there is always more to learn, and we owe a great deal to the teachers – be they 4th grade teachers, nobel prize winning professors, other big G gardeners, prairies or other beloved ecosystems of our places. Listen in - and Enjoy!
    Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place.
    We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these.
    The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.
    1 hr 8 min

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

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Gardens are more than collections of plants. Gardens and Gardeners are intersectional spaces and agents for positive change in our world. Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the…