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CP NEW MOON NEWSLETTER - JANUARY 2026

Updated: 9 hours ago


Valley Oaks in the Canyon.

Frosty. Winter in Butte County, CA


Happy New Moon of January 18, 2026


"Cultivating Place is a gift ... A way to heal, nourish and connect to the earth and each other every week!"




— Polly Wood, Artist/Baker Hood River, OR


Happy New Moon, Happy New Year, Gardeners,


The CP 100 Day Project, which kicked off in late October, is drawing to an official close at the beginning of February. In one of our recent CP 100 Day Zoom gatherings to share our pages and experiences, one of the elders in our group, Peggy, shared her thinking about a dried flower seed head she was sketching and writing about.


She shared how distinct the beauty was in this dried specimen in her view, how different than its beauty in earlier seasons of its life cycle. And, referring to it as winter harvest, Peggy noted that the purpose of this new stage of life, for her and for the sculptural seed head, was dispersal. She wanted to consider all the ways this "winter harvest" and the broader idea of "dispersal" had lessons for her.


Winter harvest. I've been germinating on this phrase since Peggy shared it in that exact way. Every season of the garden across the years, and across our individual life seasons, has lessons for us, of course. But what is my winter harvest this year? In this winter, in my season of life?


Some winter harvests are reliable, very tangible, and close to universal:


Winter greens, so fortifying! From a cold frame or raised bed or foraged from the landscape, like claytonia, nettles, and watercress in my home place. Dried peas and beans, like the generous cloth bags of assorted jewel-like pebble-like seeds, gifted to me from Elizabeth of Finding Quiet Farm on the Eastern Slope of Colorado. They will rehydrate into nourishment and beauty across the colder, darker months. They are so lovely, you almost don't want to eat them, but then....hot soups and stews! So. Decision made: eat them. Winter squash, as miraculous as the beans, how do they do it: beautiful, shapely, lasting, nourishing, tender, sweet. And, John has just harvested the first of the sweet, crisp, creamy-orange nantes variety carrots from our Canyon Creek garden! Root vegetables, are definitely among the gifts of winter harvest.


Then, too, the more intangible, less durable, and yet equally nourishing harvests. Which feel more important in this season of my life, and specifically, ever more important to mark.


Harvests of the intricacies of frost and its seemingly improbable chemistry, geometry, and astounding design flourishes. Harvests of light: the confounding delicacy, poignancy, softness even, of bitterly cold late sunrises, also cold early sunsets. Small radiant slants of pink across gray skies, bright white snow. A very different quality and luminosity of light in these winter months. Harvests of views: the incredible dendritic and muscular structure of a leafless mature Japanese maple entirely outlined in fresh snow, tracing an early winter evening sky; the incredible joy and ballast of even a moment of low wan sunlight across a winter day, a winter room.


These are my winter harvests, brought to me by and with my garden, and my gardening impulse in my long-visited places. These gifts and lessons are offered to us by the simple virtue of being attentive to, and the intimacies we share as a result with our places and their seasons. Gifts afforded us by the simple virtue of being Gardeners.


Keep it up.


In all seasons of a year, and of your life.


As another CP 100-Day-er, Anne, noted: "I am just 70. I have my whole life ahead of me!" Ah, the mindset of a Gardener for life. Don't underestimate it.


With love from our winter garden-hearts to yours,


Jennifer & The CP Team


PS: If you are in need of a little mid-winter pick-me-up, consider meeting us in Seattle for the Northwest Flower and Garden Festival. Scroll to the bottom of the newsletter for more, and for your discount ticket code!




A very large Acer palmatum specimen at the Inn on Putney Road, Brattleboro, VT. Residents say the tree is one of the largest of its kind in the US. The innkeepers report that she has told them her name is Barbara. January 2026.
A very large Acer palmatum specimen at the Inn on Putney Road, Brattleboro, VT. Residents say the tree is one of the largest of its kind in the US. The innkeepers report that she has told them her name is Barbara. January 2026.




CP PODCAST:


Every garden life is a harvest of story and meaning. Every episode of Cultivating Place, as a result, is its own harvest of sights, sounds, thoughts, and views. On Gardening by Gardeners; the tangible and the intangible. We all have something to glean from each conversation, which is why you'll find me, Ben, and Abra back here for another year (our 11th year) of these growing conversations.


Since the New Moon of December, Abra chatted with Philip Norman of the Garden Museum in London. Abra, Ben, and I kicked off 2026 with a CP Team round-table conversation looking back at 2025, and setting goals and intentions for 2026. I enjoyed a truly exceptional vision of what our suburban developments could all be, in conversation with Jim Tolstrup of the High Plains Environmental Center in Loveland, CO (my birth town in my birth state). And last week, we revisited one of my favorite conversations of the last decade, with one of my seed-people heroes, Ken Greene of Hudson Valley Seed Company.


All good listening on these dreamy midwinter's nights. Enjoy catching up on your listening with episodes from the last month (click each name or image for its audio link).


Thank you for being here, listening, and growing along.







CP: THE POWER OF GARDENERS FILM SERIES:


As we enter this next phase of the film series Cultivating Place: The Power of Gardeners, we are so excited to invite you to join us on over on Substack, where we weekly highlight the CP podcast host's Thinking Out Loud thoughts and observations, including CP film series director Myriam's Thinking Out Loud: Behind the Lens intermittent notes.


BIG THANK YOU TO ecological horticulture superstar, REBECCA MCMACKIN and her shout-out to the CP Film Series in her latest Grow Like Wild (full moon) Newsletter/Plant World News Round-Up/Hort Gossip Column of the very best, must candid, and perfect kind! (Yes, I riffed off of her moon timing to craft the CP New Moon Newsletter :)


If you do not follow her, you should: GROW LIKE WILD over on Substack is worth subscribing to! And she crafts a podcast from each Newsletter. So....listen in!


Moving forward with the final production of 10 episodes for Season 1 of an at-least 2-season series on PBS (coming in Spring 2027), we are excited (read: terrified), to begin working with new partners, including Selena and Krista of Artemis Independent, among others. We are updating the CP film series trailer, and Myriam is listening, mapping, germinating, and crafting (read: wrestling) these 10 Garden-Life stories into insight and impact, recognizing and valuing Gardeners far, far more appropriately.


If you would like to speak with us about partnering for pre-screenings events in 2026, screening events in 2027, gift licenses for school or garden groups, etc. please reach out at any time! cultivatingplace@gmail.com


Listen, see, and grow - yourself.

 


AND FINALLY...


Winter for all of its dormancy, rest, and reflection, is also rich with an annual harvest of learning. This is the season of conferences, symposia, lectures series. Make sure to check out your local opportunities for community learning from Botanic Gardens, Plant and Horticultural societies, Museums of all kinds.


Here are a few for you to check-out that CP team members are involved with:



CP EVENTS:


UPCOMING:

(all underlined headings are live links to registration pages)


Botany & CO in South Bend, IN has their class list out for the year ahead,

Jan 31 is the Last Day to register for a Year-of-Learning flex-pass; and case-by-case registration is also OPEN!


Abra Lee presents: Black America and Expressions of Nature (virtual)


Link to get tickets HERE! There are 6 complimentary tickets available, just enter promo code: SPKRF8J2 or visit this link while our quota lasts! 


 

More 2026 events here: CP EVENTS


PS: You made it to the end - Huzzah. Your Bonus? If you send the Cultivating Place team a Birthday Card in time for and in celebration of our 10th birthday on February 6th, your name will be entered into a drawing for a CP Gift Bag, including a tote bag, a mug, a cap, CP book plates, seed packs, and stickers. Please include your favorite conversation(s) over the years, when you first started listening, and any ways in which the conversations might have grown you in your place! Send b-day notes by email: cultivatingplace@gmail.com; by snail mail: Cultivating Place PO bx 37 Durham, CA 95938; post on IG @cultivating_place, on LinkedIn or Substack tagging @Cultivating Place/Jennifer Jewell. One winning name will drawn on Friday February 6th!






Winter views that open the mind and move the heart.
Winter views that open the mind and move the heart.

 




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