CP NEW MOON NEWSLETTER - APRIL 2025
- Jennifer Jewell
- Apr 28
- 7 min read
Native CA silver bush lupine in full bloom
Happy New Moon of April,
"To me, Cultivating Place means tending to and recognizing the plants that bear witness to our histories in this world,"
guest host Abra Lee recently shared.
We were sitting beneath an historic 150+ year old Southern magnolia, laced with a clambering white 'Cherokee' rose (the Georgia State Flower), species narcissus bobbing in the spring breeze beside us, in the center of acres of native and historic plantings of the Oakland Garden Cemetery (established 1850) in downtown Atlanta for a CP Live interview experience around Abra's work as Director of Horticulture at Oakland.
If the complexities of humans, gardens, past and present are true in most gardens, they are particularly true in an historic cemetery garden. In the US South. So many hard and beautiful stories these plants and grounds have witnessed.
When I heard Abra's articulation of plants bearing witness with us and for us, I thought this is what Cultivating Place does too: this 10 year accumulation of long-form audio representing Garden Life stories and voices bears witness also. CP bears witness and documents so many of the ways the great diversity of plants, places, and cultivating humans in relationship with them have the ability to hold us together. To bring us together and grow us better.
This is now one of my favorite questions to ask–and to listen for in others:
What does the concept of Cultivating Place well, and with care,
mean or look like to you?
Gardeners (like everything) exist on a spectrum. Gardeners with a capital G (aka Big G Gardeners) are special. Working in the best interest of plants, places, and humans they are akin to Keystone Species. They are a subspecies if you will: Homo Sapiens subsp Gardener. Plants, Gardens & Ecosystems tended by these kinds of Gardeners and cultures across time in our world serve as Keystone Spaces.
Spaces which bolster biodiversity to be sure - but which also know, nurture, nourish, nurse, and nudge-toward-fullness whole histories, whole communities, whole cultures, communal health & well being, communal cultural literacy. These Keystone species Gardeners and Gardens model sane and reciprocal economic systems, and spiritual centers that welcome and care for everyone - us and all our planet mates....
The new moon is noted for being an auspicious time to grow things up - to visualize and manifest how we want our lives and the world by extension to grow. So, welcome back to a regular monthly CP A View from Here newsletter - keeping us as a community a little more connected and in dialogue around all things CP.
While our CP New Moon Newsletters won't always be this long, they will always provide behind the scenes views and updates on how to listen in, look carefully, read a little, respond a little. Scroll down for more on CP Podcast, CP Live, Past & Upcoming Events, AND A SURVEY on new CP thank-you gifts we'd love your input on (*and there's a bonus ;)
So grateful to be growing along together,
Jennifer + The CP Team
CP PODCAST:
We are well into our 10th year of producing a weekly CP program heard by Gardeners around the world and around the country–Thank you to our home station 91.7 NSPR in Chico, CA, and syndicating stations such as 91.7 WVXU in Cincinnati, OH and 90.5 KWMR in Point Reyes Station, CA).
As a podcast we are just about to hit 4.2 million downloads. Wow.
In a given year, season, month even, we often hear themes wending through various constellations of conversations, pointing to a collective consciousness perhaps, but also to our shared common ground of these living relations and spaces we care about, we sense, we tend.
Conversations in the past six weeks all include some sense of Universal: Jennifer speaking with ecologist and writer Brooke Williams about his new devotional to those universal garden allies, dragonflies, and how they speak to or from a universal spirit; Abra in conversation with Mae Lin Plummer, of the IDEA center at the Denver Botanical Gardens about the universal concept of adapting to place (as plants and people) and finding ourselves at home in the natural diversity of life; Ben in conversation with plantsman Kelly Norris on how we changeour ways in relation to natural ecological gardens versus overly controlled one. In conversation with Debbie Millman of the renowned podcast, Design Matters, about her new book Love Letter to A Garden, listeners heard her definition of Cultivating Place: "fully inhabiting my soul."
And in re-exploring the long Garden-life legacy of the Gardener, Plantsman, advocate, Liberty Hyde Bailey we read these words of universal truth and source:
"Above all, old and young, we must never lose faith in the soil. It is the source and condition of our existence. It never grows stale and it never wears out. The earth is always young,"
which led us right into the final conversation of the month: Abra speaking with the admirable Juliet Sargeant of the UK whose new book "It Starts with Soil", publishing May 1 from Frances Lincoln, brings us full circle.
We each of us–Gardeners or not–are universally, historically and presently, literally and metaphysically connected by the plants on this precious ancient always renewing alchemy of soil, oxygen, biomass, sun, water, growth and spirit (and seed)...
Tending to one another.
|
"When I think about gardens, I truly hold this fundamental belief that gardens can lead the way in our communities, we're so dynamic and we intersect with every facet of life: art, health & wellness, education, science, conservation, beauty, entertainment, and economy. We can lead the way." - Mae Lin Plummer, Director IDEA Center for Public Gardens at the Denver Botanic Gardens |
CP LIVE:
In April, Myriam and Khoa of EM EN, and John and I, conducted our 7th CP Live.
Every single one of these multi-day, in-person experiences and the interview around which they are designed has been transformative for us. Intense, moving, learning. So different than the intimate and lovely experience of interviewing people from afar. In person, in place, with full sensory engagement, we can fully see and support these Gardeners and all that they are growing.
This is the goal of these experiences: to meet Gardeners where they are and to make visible all that is enlivened and strengthened, connected and activated by who they are, what they are growing, and why they are called to this exact cultivation.
With the news of the day often throwing us off balance, the above clip from our CP Live in LA's Griffith Park last November with Artist Gardeners (Cultivators of Place) Studio Tutto, comprised of Sofia Lacin and Hennessy Christophel, means even more than it did at the time.
Studio Tutto created a wild-garden-of-a-mural in the courtyard of the Griffith Park Welcome Center. Tribute to the life and symbolic meaning of the beloved mountain lion P-22, who had coexisted in the wilds and ecosystems of this large urban park for his lifetime. Into the mural, Studio Tutto incorporated the park's native plants– their colors and forms and seasonal feel. They included hidden creatures large and small. In collaboration with the Parks Department horticulture staff, they planned and planted a small, locally-native garden from seedlings and seed at the base of one part of the mural, and installed a seed spire to slowly germinate, bloom, and evolve in place over time. As life does.
This CP Live event was the occasion of the unveiling of the completed mural & garden to the world. Sofia and Hennessy finished the final touches the day before the event, and on that final day, in passing to a parks person they suggested that perhaps this project could be used as a model for native plant gardens and native ecosystem representation in parks across the city?
They learned just this week, it will be!
These Artist Gardeners here seeded natural and cultural literacy, they re-seeded biodiversity, they seeded renewed vigor for a community center, they seeded collaboration and mutual flourishing between park staff and their environments, and out now across the city and beyond.
In the wake of the LA Fires, in the wake of more news on biodiversity loss, the stripping of protections for our national parks, our clean air and clean water acts, worldwide acts of violence and ecocide, and our ever increasing division as humans, to make fully visible and valued all that Gardeners cultivate in their places seems like the most important work CPcould be doing.
We have three more CP Lives coming up this year! We're actively working to meet (and we hope exceed!) our 2025 Catto-Shaw matching grant to fund these CP Live's and their documentary film and associated episodic conversations.
GREAT CP NEWS & WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK:
You've been asking and we've been hearing your requests for Cultivating Place logo items loud and clear!
We're hard at work foraging for ethically-sourced, quality crafted (out of repurposed materials already in the cycle of material objects or non-toxic and compostable materials) items for you to adorn your garden-life and show your love and support of CP!
We can’t wait to show you more....
But WAIT!
FIRST: we need to know more from you. As a small group of dedicated garden-life humans, we know you want us to put our time, energy, talent, and precious resources into objects of beauty that you really want, will use, will bring you joy, and will make your garden-life proud!
TAKE OUR CP DONOR THANK YOU SURVEY HERE:
(*Bonus I promised: Complete the survey by May 15th & you'l be added to a drawing in September for a CP DONOR THANK YOU GIFT BUNDLE ;) |
CP EVENTS:
RECENT:
March 8 - 10th annual Landscaping with Colorado Native Plants, Keynote address; Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO
March 21 - New Hampshire Master Gardener Spring Symposium Keynote address
March 28 - 17th annual Western Landscape Symposium, Keynote address; Pueblo, CO
April 16 - People & Pollinators Lunchtime Webinar
April 27 - Journaling with Nature Podcast, Australia
UPCOMING:
May 11 - 14 CP Live with Maidu Summit Consortium - Northern CA
May 21 - Keynote speaker for GCA regional meeting Summit County, NJ
May 30 - Commencement Speaker for Longwood Fellows Program 2024-2025 Cohort
June 17 - CP Communing Pre-Summer Solstice (registration coming soon - set your intention now ;)
More events here: CP EVENTS
Interested in attending a CP Live?
We're inviting CP Donors to our CP Live in Cincinnati, OH September 12th, 2025. For your invitation, invest in our work today through the support buttons here or at the top of cultivatingplace.org.
CULTIVATING PLACE FOUNDATION
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