Thursdays at 10 a.m. and Sundays at 9 a.m.
The essential connections between nature, our gardens, and our places in both: I’m Jennifer Jewell and this is Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden a weekly public radio program and podcast that explores what we mean when we garden.
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. It celebrates how these interconnections support the places we cultivate, how they nourish our bodies and feed our spirits. Take a listen.
A co-production of North State Public Radio (KCHO 91.7 FM in Chico, CA and KFPR 88.9 FM in Redding, CA) and CultivatingPlace.com, Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden airs Thursdays at 10:00 AM. The program is created and hosted by Jennifer Jewell; produced and engineered by Sarah Bohannon. Our communications coordinator is Kacey Gardner. Music by Matt Shilts.
Cultivating Place is based on two beliefs: The first, that horticulture (“the art of garden cultivation or management” according to the Oxford English Dictionary) is a foundational element of our cultural literacy — on par with art, music, architecture, history, geography, social studies and literature. The second, that gardens and gardening provide a unique, and uniquely beautiful, bridge connecting us to our larger environments — culturally and botanically.
Weekly interviews explore the many different ways people come to and bring to life what garden and gardening mean. They celebrate how gardening encourages a direct relationship with the dynamic processes of the plants, animals, soils, seasons and climatic factors that come to bear on a garden.
Cultivating Place builds on and deepens the conversations begun in 8 years of creating, writing and hosting the regionally focused In a North State Garden: Celebrating the Art, Craft and Science of Gardening in Northern California, which aired on North State Public Radio from January of 2008 - January of 2016.
The show is available as a podcast on iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.
This week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by Daniel Atkinson — teacher, student, scholar of the African American Diaspora and Jazz and Rhythm and Blues music and dedicated home gardener. Currently gardening in Puyallup, Wash., Daniel shares his thoughts on saving and sharing the seeds handed down to him by his ancestors — some of which have been in his family for more than 200 years. He also discusses the connection for him between music, surfing, gardening and life.
The first official day of spring is right around the corner, and among other things that means we're in the heart of flower and garden shows around the country.
This week, we speak with Sam Lemheney, Chief of Shows and Events for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which annually hosts the famed Philadelphia Flower Show. The longest-running horticultural event in the country (not counting Spring herself), the Philadelphia Flower Show is a pilgrimage destination for many horticulturists and gardeners around the country.
This week our guest is something of a renaissance man. A Colorado native of Greek descent, Panayoti Kelaidis has a background in Chinese literature and as a computer systems analyst in addition to being an expert in — and enthusiastically curious about — most things that photosynthesize and contain chlorophyll.
On Cultivating Place this week, we are energized by Lorene Edwards Forkner: award-winning garden designer, author, writer, Editor of the esteemed Pacific Horticulture magazine, mother and, above all, great lover of life, based in Seattle.
Dragged, as she likes to relate, into the garden by her lively young son many years ago, Lorene chats with us about the importance of gardens and horticulture in our individual and communal lives at this particular moment in time. She shares her experiences of how gardens help us to enjoy and embrace life’s inevitable seasons and sometimes its chaos.
This week on Cultivating Place, the program’s conversations begin with Bernard Trainor, the Australian-born landscape designer. Known for his iconic California gardens, Trainor is both a hands-on gardener and a big view, large concept designer. His philosophy and work illustrate the power of specific place in any garden or cultivated landscape — no matter how big or small, urban or rural.