Episode 397: On Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden with Jennifer Jewell of Public Radio’s Cultivating Place, plus State Focus: Indiana

Jennifer Jewell, creator and host of "Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden" (c) Delaney Jewell Simchuk

I'm delighted to introduce you to my featured guest today: Jennifer Jewell, creator and host of Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden.

Cultivating Place plays a significant role in the audio space, not just on North State Public Radio in Chico, California, the show's home base, but everywhere through the power of Podcasting. I know many of our Slow Flowers Podcast listeners have already discovered Jennifer and this wonderful one-hour weekly program -- in fact, Jennifer and I are frequently drawn to the same guests and topics.

Jennifer Jewell of Cultivating Place in her beloved Northern California home (c) John Whittlesey

Cultivating

Place is an incredible platform for dialogue with people for whom nature and

gardening is a central, essential act. Jennifer is passionate about

conversations that often include the simple question: What is your garden practice?

Here

is more about Cultivating Place. The program's

premise is that gardens are more than

collections of plants.

Gardens and Gardeners are intersectional spaces and agents for

positive change in our world. Together, we center gardens and gardeners as

paradigm shifters improving our relationships to and impacts on the

more-than-human natural environment, on the larger culture(s), and on our communal

and individual health and well-being.

Through

thoughtful conversations with growers, gardeners, naturalists, scientists,

artists and thinkers, Cultivating Place illustrates the many ways in which

gardens and gardening are integral to our natural and cultural literacy - on

par with Art, Science, Literature, Music, Religion. Gardens encourage a direct

relationship with the dynamic processes of the plants, animals, soils, seasons,

and climatic factors that come to bear on a garden, providing a unique, and

uniquely beautiful, bridge connecting us to our larger environments —

culturally and botanically. With 38% of US households engaging in gardening -

we are many, and especially together, we make a difference in this world. These

conversations celebrate how all these interconnections support the places we

cultivate, nourish our bodies, and feed our spirits.

Jennifer Jewell, photographed at the Fairoaks Horticulture Center in the Sacramento area (c) John Whittlesey

Here

is more about Jennifer Jewell:

Host of the national award-winning, weekly public radio program and podcast, Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History & the Human Impulse to Garden, Jennifer Jewell is a gardener, garden writer, and gardening educator and advocate.

Particularly interested in the intersections between gardens, the native plant environments around them, and human culture, she is the daughter of garden and floral designing mother and a wildlife biologist father. Jennifer has been writing about gardening professionally since 1998, and her work has appeared in Gardens Illustrated, House & Garden, Natural Home, Old House Journal, Colorado Homes & Lifestyles, and Pacific Horticulture. She worked as Native Plant Garden Curator for Gateway Science Museum on the campus of California State University, Chico, and lives and gardens in Butte County, California.

Jennifer’s first book about extraordinary women changing the world with plants, is due out in early 2020 from Timber Press. I'm so honored that she asked me to be part of th...