This week, when we think about Cultivating Place well, we get to the seed of the matter in conversation with the team at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Bank , also known as MARSB . We’re in conversation with Ed Toth, the Executive Director , and John Price, MARSB’s Associate Director and Native Seed Collection Coordinator . As a collective, MARSB is wisely managing and conserving their region’s wild seed resources, and encouraging the development of the sustainable and ethic

Chris, tongue in cheek....see below for the true nature of his gardener hands, which he has had since childhood. Chris Fehlhaber is a Gardener, a husband, and a father. Now based in the Chicago area, Chris has worked in public horticulture in a variety of capacities and with well-known organizations including with plantsman Roy Diblik in Wisconsin, at Chanticleer Garden outside of Philadelphia, with the Perennial Plant Association , and as one of the co-hosts of the Native

Brenna Estrada is owner and founder of Three Brothers Blooms , a flower farm located on 2.5 acres of Camano Island in the Pacific Northwest. Brenna is also the author of "Pansies, How to Grow, Reimagine, and Create Beauty with Pansies and Violas" , published by Timber Press just over a year ago. Ben Futa's conversation with Brenna today spans many topics, with pansies as a worthy and common thread. As Ben notes: "Brenna makes a compelling case for revisiting our relationship

Spring is of course perfect for some wild dreams about what we can and will sow in the seasons to come. With plants, and with ourselves. Jen William’s vision for her work as Wild Dreams Farm and Seed on Washington’s Vashon Island is to ensure abundance and biodiversity in our culture and in our gardens by growing and breeding open pollinated vegetable, flower, and herb seeds which nourish our human and more than human communities. I had the great joy of visiting Wild Dreams

In honor of the Vernal Equinox, and the balance we are all longing for, we're joined this week by humanist, conservationist, professor and writer in residence at the Harvard Divinity School, Terry Tempest Williams . From her 1991 classic, "Refuge, An Unnatural History of Family & Place", to to her newest title out now from Grove Atlantic, "The Glorians, Visitations from the Holy Ordinary" , and the more than 100 publications in between, Terry’s writing is grounded in her lo

Spring is stirring, buds are swelling, and soil is warming. This week we celebrate the joys of healthy, living soil in conversation with Omar Al Shafie, co-founder of Northern California-based Teregen Ag , a purpose-driven, innovative, soil and plant nutrient producer and researcher dedicated to furthering our collective transition toward sustainable, regenerative farming. Having witnessed firsthand how healthy soil can transform not just crops, but entire ecosystems and comm

This week on  Cultivating Place , host Ben Futa is in conversation with John Little, an ecological designer and public horticulture advocate living and working in the UK. His firm, the Grass Roof Company , launched in 1998. Ever since, they have been expanding and broadening ideas around public plantings, habitat, and those who care for them. John's not-for-profit,  Care, Not Capital , is training the next generation of public gardeners with the skills they need to fully serv

This week on Cultivating Place , Abra Lee is in conversation with Laverne Brockington and Vance Davis, great nieces of Annie Mae Vann Reid, a historic florist and entrepreneur based in Darlington, South Carolina. From the 1920s to the 1960s, Annie Mae tended a thriving floral business that grew out of her hobby flower garden, and grew her community with her. For Laverne and Vance, their aunt's legacy is rooted not only in flowers but in faith and a deep commitment to communit

As the earliest signs of spring unfurl in the mild climates–think snowdrops manzanita, the earliest narcissus, wild iris and Daphne odora , hmmm!–the earliest pollinators are paying even more attention than we are. This week we learn more about some of our earliest and BEST native pollinating bees – the orchard mason bees. We’re in conversation with Thyra McKelvie, who loves “these sweet little bees". And it was this love that brought her to gardening in her adulthood. Based

In these dark, cold days of February, when too much rain or snow, and WAY TOO MUCH ICE, or not enough rain or snow, might be getting you down, we take this week, just in time for Valentine’s Day, to embrace, lean into, and love the comforts of tea. We're in conversation with Michael Fritts, founder of Golden Feather Tea in Concow, CA, to explore the history, cultivation, the rituals and the rewards (which are many) of tea. After more than 15 years at it, and despite massive

You know the hundreds of thousands of flowers, floral bouquets, candles, and other bits of personal importance that people are called to leave at the physical locations of traumatic events? These flowers and other ephemera, and the human impulse behind them, are what catalyze Tanja Hollander. This week on Cultivating Place , host Ben Futa is in conversation with Tanja, an artist & activist Gardener based in the US Northeast. Tanja works with gardens, social practice, photogra

For our final episode of January, we honor gardening and Cultivating Place  often in spite of the odds. It ’s been a full year since the devastating fires of Los Angeles, California in January of 2025. Many lives were lost, many acres and homes were burned. And many gardens, cultivated spaces, and gardeners were profoundly impacted. This week, we check - in with two humans who are cultivating their place with care in the wake of this catastrophe. Leigh Adams and Shawn Maestr

This week, Cultivating Place welcomes Terry Richardson in conversation with Abra Lee. Terry is known to many as @theblkthumb , an intrepid, enthusiastic, and encouraging orchid rescuer, educator, and storyteller. Terry has helped thousands of people rethink what it means to care for plants, specifically orchids! Terry’s journey began not with expertise, but with curiosity and failure. He is a self-proclaimed “black thumb,” as opposed to the more well-known "green thumb". He

January is prime seed-dreaming and seed-catalogue season. With that in mind we’re revisiting a favorite conversation all about generosity, mutual care, good seeds, and seed people. Who doesn’t need more of all those as we continue to lay the foundation for this new year? Ken Greene – who goes by K - is a seed person. He is the co-founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Library , which in 2004 became the first public library based seed lending library in the US; in 2008 he went on t

As we continue our new year, we’re once again gaining elevation and new growing thinking. We’re in conversation with Jim Tolstrup, Executive Director of the High Plains Environmental Center in Loveland, Colorado, where, by development design, they caringly cultivate Suburbitat. Suburbitat is a land ethic, a mind-set, and a book that all hold a vision of a built environment where suburbia and native ecosystems exist side by side and intertwined. It is magical in all seasons!

In honor of the new year fresh-faced and open-hearted in front of us, Ben Futa, Abra Lee and I together this week for a first-ever check in as we review 2025 and look forward to all that we will grow together in 2026.\   Including now being on the airwaves on the Western Slope of Colorado on KVNF Community Radio for their winter months! So glad to meet all you Western Slope Gardeners!   Happy Holidays! Follow Us Online: cultivatingplace.org and on Instagram: @cultivating_Plac

For our final Cultivating Place episode of 2025, Abra Lee is looking forward by looking back. She’s in conversation with Philip Norman, a gardener, an historian, and a longtime curator at the Garden Museum in London. From New Zealand to London, Philips's life is shaped by gardens, plants, and the stories behind them. Philip grew up on a family farm in New Zealand, where he learned to garden alongside older neighbors who loved sharing their knowledge. Philip eventually trave

In honor of the Winter Solstice happening this coming weekend on December 21st at 10:03 AM Pacific, we celebrate land and place-based cultivation from a foundation of cultural and spiritual care leading the way. We’re joined in this by Dr. Don Hankins, Professor of Geography and Planning at California State University, Chico. Of Miwok ancestry, Don, for decades now, has focused on applied research of indigenous stewardship practices as a “keystone process to aid in conservati

This week on Cultivating Place we celebrate one woman’s long-standing and loving cultivation of place in rural New Jersey. Janet Mavec is the steward and student of Bird Haven Farm, which after many years of learning from and loving, she now celebrates in word and image in her new place-based memoir: "Bird Haven Farm: The Story of An Original American Garden" . Bird Haven Farm is written by Janet and photographed by Ngoc Minh Ngo , out now from Rizzoli Press. This week's is

“Ecological restoration is no longer a nicety, it’s a necessity,” proclaims the Blackland Collaborative , a group working to help make cities more biodiverse and inclusive, and to help heal human communities while restoring vulnerable species. Bridging science and design, the Collaborative "brings people and nature home"; and they believe in"humans’ capacity to improve and protect". John Hart Asher is a co-founder and senior environmental designer with the Blackland Collabor