The conservation of biodiversity writ large is directly tied to the conservation of native bees: crucial pollinators in our cultivated and wildland ecosystems across most regions of the world. This week, we look forward to International Pollinator Week, which always falls in the third week of June (tied to the Summer solstice), in conversation with Krystle Hickman, an award-winning conservation photographer, author, artist and National Geographic Explorer. Her passion is nat

Kate Brown is an MIT Distinguished Professor in the History of Science. Across her career, her research has sometimes inadvertently documented the impact of urban, often small and under resourced gardens and gardeners, in our world. Her new book, "Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City", compiles this research and her own lived experience of its truth and potentially beneficial consequences. She makes a case for the importance of

This week on Cultivating Place, we continue with our flower theme as we celebrate May, looking toward the most floral of celebrations, Mother’s Day in the US. We discuss not us as gardeners growing flowers, but rather, how flowers shape our world, our cultures, our economies, our thinking, and outlooks. We're in conversation with Christin Geall, author of "Cultivated: Elements of Floral Style"'. We last spoke with Christin about her first book and she joins us again today to

Roses are one of those topics in the garden world: They can be polarizing, they can be energizing, and yet given that there are roses native to most environments of North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and humans have revered them for millennia, they can also be connective tissue for so much–generationally, culturally, environmentally, medicinally, and certainly, aesthetically. This week I am joined by Robin Jennings, rosarian and manager at Heirloom formerly known as Hei

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 to

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

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 community

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 i

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, photograp

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 Maestretti

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

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

This week on Cultivating Place , host Ben Futa is in conversation with Rebecca McMackin, a dedicated public servant working in the context of ecological horticulture. Rebecca is on a mission to empower more people to grow more plants in more places while cultivating empathy, compassion, and advocacy for the natural world. We last heard from Rebecca here on CP in 2021, and a lot has happened in her growing life since then! Rebecca is an ecologically obsessed horticulturist and

This week, we finish up Artober on CP, in conversation with artist Mary Jackson, a renowned sweetgrass basket weaver known for combining traditional methods with contemporary designs. Based in the Low Country of South Carolina, Mary is the descendant of generations of Gullah basket weavers. Born in 1945, in 2008, Mary was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship ("Genius Grant") for "pushing the centuries-old tradition in stunning new directions" . From the 1970s throug

This week on CP, host Abra Lee is joined in conversation by Tracy Qiu, a horticulturist, researcher, advocate, and artist who explores how plants, stories, and culture intersect. Tracy holds a masters in Public Horticulture from the University of Delaware, is a Longwood Fellow , and is finishing her doctoral thesis at Concordia University in Montreal. Tracy's work explores the colonial roots of botanical gardens, and in this conversation, Tracy and Abra will follow Tracy’s jo

Welcome to our next airing of a CP LIVE* , 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 are telling 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

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...

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...

This week on Cultivating Place , we lean into The Art of CP, exploring how the act of Cultivating Place is artful, and how the creative...