CP NEW MOON NEWSLETTER - OCTOBER 2025
- Jennifer Jewell
- 4 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Wherever we go, there they are. the plants by which we orient, with whom we adapt, and co-evolve.
Happy New Moon of October 21, 2025:
“You have completely changed the way I see everything about being a gardener. I am amazed. Thank you.”
— attendee of the Cultivating Place, The Power of Gardeners
Oct 18, 2025 keynote address
Alachua County Horticultural Expo, Florida
Shifting seasons always shift our perspectives, don’t they? In the Northern Hemisphere as fall deepens, we change clothes, we change preferred foods, drinks, activities; we change our bedtimes and our bed covers.
We literally shift views: where once there was a forest of biomass, we now see the individual architecture of trunks, branches; where once we saw a mass of green leaved canopies, we now see the flaming red, sunset apricot, orange, gold, cinnamon of photosynthesis subsiding, and senescence taking over. We gaze mesmerized at the fall and winter weather patterns tracing across the horizon; in this time, we see and respond to the different needs and natures of our plant companions. Our perspectives shift. Have shifted.
When the man quoted above came up to me in the line of book buyers after a long day of two talks at the Alachua County Horticultural Expo in Gainesville, Florida last week, he was so thoughtful and intent. He seemed surprised himself when he shared that the message of CP completely changed his perspective, how it changed the way he saw gardening in our world.
To invite others–as many others as possible–to see themselves and this calling to caring cultivation as profoundly important and valuable, is everything to me. To invite Gardeners and non-Gardeners alike to understand themselves as potential keystones holding and bringing together environments, economies, cultures, communities, and spirit: that is good growing. To witness even one additional person experience this shift in perspective is what success means here at Cultivating Place.
So glad to be growing here together. One Gardener at a time. One act of caring cultivation of people, place, and plants at a time. Stay grounded; stay in touch.
Warmly,
Jennifer & The CP Team
PS: OUR Art of CP online auction OPENS this THURSDAY! WHOOP! Hope you’ve enjoyed the rollout of artists over on Instagram these past two weeks..:) You can still register (free) as a bidder and supporter of all things CP here: ART OF CP online art auction
AND we have a great group registered for our upcoming #cp100dayproject. For updates and invites to regular online gatherings (including a pre-launch DIY book binding Zoom gathering October 30th) during the 100 days, make sure to register (free)!
CP PODCAST:
The many perspectives explored this past month, and still coming up in October, on CP is such a vivid reminder that we are never one thing, we are multifaceted and prismatic. This is true of Gardeners, Gardens, Artists, Plants, and Places.The capacity to alter our view, even a tiny bit, allows everything to look differently. This can be life-altering, this can be healing, this can be challenging. And that is the work of Cultivating Place conversations: to share in the personal perspective and experience of another human in this garden-life journey, and in such access, grow our own journey a little more clearly.
Catch up on your listening now; click each image for podcast links....
Because, everything we do as Gardeners who cultivate with care and intention is an opportunity to take care of one another and the world more beautifully, intelligently, intentionally, and imaginatively.
As we celebrate Artober this month, we will have featured two of our CP LIVE conversations with two different artists: LA-BASED Studio-Tutto, and Charleston, SC based Mary Jackson, MacArthur Fellow "Genius Grant" award-winning Gullah sweetgrass basket maker coming up next week. Listen in!
CP LIVE:
It was actually bittersweet to complete our 10th and final CP LIVE of 2024/2025. It was amazing, and moving, and perspective expanding–as every single one of these 10 in person multi-day events have been, and to know it will be a year before our next series of them tugged on our hearts.
When the Catto Shaw Foundation asked me in the fall of 2023 what my 5 year goals were, I already knew that they included developing a succession plan for the podcast (Hello Cultivating Place Foundation); they included diversification of host voices (Hello, Abra Lee and Ben Futa) in locale, in gender, in life experience; and, they included curating in-person recording events in places and with Gardeners and gardening communities I might not otherwise have the chance to be with in person based on the simple metrics and realities of public radio and public speaking. To curate these in person experiences and navigate them with Myriam and Khoa (and Ethan) of EM EN has been intensely intimate, emotional, yes, exhausting, and more rewarding than I could ever have imagined.
To have had the 10th experience be with Kristyn Leach of Second Generation Seeds and Gohyang Fields Seed Campus in Sebastapol, CA could not have been a more perfect culmination. What is seed? To the plant world, it is the alpha and omega, the beginning, the end, and the beginning again…of everything: ecosystems, food, culture, economy, artistry, the sacred at the center of all of our natures. Kristyn’s stewarding of cultural significant seed reminds us how important the past and the present are to the future.
These live experiences, which we will plan many more of starting again in 2027, were truly transformational. We hope the documentary film results will be likewise. Stay tuned as we germinate this next chapter of CP: cultivatingplacefilm
Listen, see, and grow - yourself.
AND FINALLY......
As we look forward, we (as you might be) are looking forward to the slower months of winter dormancy and calm. Dormancy never means doing nothing, but it means doing more below the surface, underground, inwardly, quietly.
Before we get to that slower time, we finish up this growing season exuberantly. We are in the last few months before we mark a full decade of Cultivating Place conversations, elevating and expanding the way we think and talk about gardening and gardeners. I, for one, have very much been expanded by every conversation, every talk, every word written and recorded. I sincerely hope you all have as well.
The ART OF CP online ART Auction goes live in Two Days!
Our inaugural online Art of CP Auction features the work of 17 cultivating and place-based artists (think: Frances Palmer, Christin Geall, Rebecca Allan, Ngoc Minh Ngo, Candy Matthews, Lorene Edwards Forkner, Julia Lucey, and many more painters, jewelers, weavers!). Each artist's work is inspired by their place, and in turn illuminates their relationship to plants and place so powerfully. We’ve had so much fun introducing you the CP Community to each and every one of these artists and their stories these past few weeks as we’ve built up to the auction going live on THIS THURSDAY October 23rd!
Through the profound generosity of these artful humans, ALL proceeds from the auction will support CP in all its facets: podcast, film, advocacy, and events.
Our goal is to finish meeting our match for the 2025 Catto Shaw Foundation Grant of $100,000. We have just $15,000 to go! Thank you from the bottom of our garden hearts for all of your investment and partnership in this world view we cannot grow alone.
Hope to see you on the auction bidder list, and that you see some perfect item of place-based art you want to bring home to your place (or send to someone you love as we look to the holiday season??? ) REGISTER HERE
CP Garden Based Autumnal 100-Day Project
Our CP garden-nature-based-Autumnal 100 Day Challenge starts on the liminal date of All Hallows Eve–October 31st. Kind of perfectly, it will culminate on February 7th, 2026 - the 10th Birthday of the Cultivating Place program! REGISTER HERE to PARTICIPATE
The focus for your 100 day project can be anything you want it to be: a daily observation, sketch, painting, collage, arrangement, needle craft, daily poem or paragraph, daily learning a new native plant or insect of your region, daily place-based photo, daily work time on a larger project of any kind....or all of the above....any daily commitment that intersects with and deepens your cultivation of place with intention and care. Any daily practice that somehow will grow you and your place counts. And as you share it forward, of course, your creativity will grow us all.
As with all 100-Day challenges, we will be one another's accountability partners and garden allies, asking for a daily check-in somewhere we can all see in order to support one another: on Instagram, Substack, Facebook, by email, etc. using the tag #CP100DayChallenge2025.
Margaux Kent of Peg & Awl and I will be hosting a private Zoom event for registered participants only on October 30th (once you're registered, look for an invite and link coming later this week) to learn how to make your own notebook for keeping track of your project days. We will also host a grand finale virtual gathering on Saturday February 7th to share our results - physical and metaphysical - with each other and toast CP a happy10th birthday! 🎂
If you were among the first 30 registrants, you will have an email from me this week conforming your address so that I can ship out your Peg & Awl crafted, CP logo-ed Orra black bound notebook. Many thanks to Peg & Awl for their collaboration. 💚
Anyone can participate in #CP100DayChallenge2025, but only registered participants will receive the invites and links to the virtual gatherings and check ins. It’s free! REGISTER HERE to PARTICIPATE
I am really looking forward to this communal cultivation, play, reflection, and exploration – in which we will no doubt discover more about ourselves, one another, and our places.
Jennifer & The CP Team
PS: If you are starting to look for special things to delight the gardeners you love this holiday season, don’t forget the CP Shop….might have just what you’re growing for!
You made it to the end - Huzzah - I will leave you with this from a supporter and listener this month:
"Thank you for everything CP puts out into the world! I regularly listen to the podcast, which unfailingly inspires and uplifts me. I am so grateful for CP’s efforts to make this world a better place, and to inspire others to do the same.
– Kim Cozzetto Maynard, Seattle, WA"
We so appreciate your note, Kim, and we thank all of you for being here growing along with us.
CP EVENTS:
UPCOMING:
Oct 23 – 27: THE ART OF CP - online place-based art auction to benefit CP
October 30: 7:30 am Pacific/10:30 am Eastern #CP100DayChallenge pre-kickoff virtual gathering workshop on book binding and crafting your own journal. Invite will be sent to all challenge registrants Friday the 24th.
October 31 - February 7: #CP100DayChallenge
Nov 9: Abra Lee is Keynote Speaker for the Berkshire Botanical Gardens annual Rooted in Place Ecological Symposium, In Person.
November 20: Jennifer Jewell Speaker, Oregon Native Plant Society, Ashland Chapter
December 6 & 7: Jennifer will help lead a Wonderful Winter Wreathing Weekend with Gateway Science Museum & Friends of the Ahart Herbarium, Chico, CA (more info coming)
December 16: 3 pm Pacific/6 pm Eastern pre-Winter Solstice CP COMMUNING (registration coming late November)
All events here: CP EVENTS
A bumble bee supporting border and mural, New Orleans, LA. Love it!!
CULTIVATING PLACE FOUNDATION
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