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!

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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.