Cultivating Place New Moon News - JULY 2026
- Jennifer Jewell
- 14 minutes ago
- 6 min read
Old friends in new-to-me places: Bombus on Geraniaceae in Modoc County, CA June 2026
Happy New Moon of July 14, 2026–because the new moon is a perfect time to start fresh, to grow up, and to grow out.
Happy New Moon gardeners,
I love mid-July: we're past the festive adrenaline rush of Memorial Day, of school getting out for summer, of May and June wedding season, and Fourth of July celebrations. We can now settle into the season.
We know by now if our peppers and beans and tomatoes are doing well, whether the cut flowers we planned for so extra extravagantly in February are really coming to fruition, or not. And, we’re looking ahead to planting for fall harvest, for how to improve next year.
As a gardener, at least in the northern hemisphere, you're weeding and watering and deadheading and harvesting, adding more compost or fish emulsion to keep plants going. You’re paying attention to how many nests have already fledged, to the birds and bugs that marked late spring and early summer, already starting to move to their next chapter or life phase. We're bemoaning (for good reason) too much heat, too much or not enough rain, the fire or smoke of the season.
If you’re paying gardening-attention, you can see the season (#life) in slow-motion time-lapse before your eyes daily. It’s beautiful and sweet and deeply mortal.
We’re in that delicious sleepy eddy of a long, hot summer’s quiet stretch, even as the end of summer vacation for school-aged families is on in view: “Just six more weeks,” says one parent to me in a sad and relieved way.
And of course, this eddy is perfect for summer reading. I recently read Ferris Jabr's New York Times essay about creating a habitat garden and falling down the rabbit hole of native plant ecology and polemics. Did you catch it? His story is familiar: he and his husband decide to garden for habitat, they plant a flowery garden they love, then learn more about native plants, question their choices and feel badly that they didn't know more. They gradually reshape the garden, following the many native plant/invasive plant perspectives along the way. Ultimately, they end up with a thoughtful mix of native and non-native plants that serves both wildlife and themselves. In many ways, it's simply the story of becoming a gardener—observing, learning, adjusting, and finding balance between ideals, science, and lived experience.
What bothered me wasn't that journey but one sentence:
"When green thumb idealism grows to ungainly proportions, blocking out the wider world, when it begins to seed the public with the impression that their backyard oases alone can decide the fate of life on earth, it risks becoming a dangerously smug and naïve conceit."
Wait. WHAT?!
This framing offers us the same old false choice. Are gardeners insignificant, or are we powerful enough to be dangerous? Which is it?
Thirty years of interviewing, researching, writing, and broadcasting about gardeners proves to me daily that our collective choices matter a great deal. When we do it right, Gardeners drive organic food and flower growing; we preserve cultural traditions through food, utility, ritual, and medicine plants; we create habitat, we can reduce national pesticide use, re-introduce native species, and thereby support pollinating insects and other wildlife; our gardens offset heat gain, store water and carbon; we influence everything from local landscapes to billion-dollar industries.
If our idealistic choices didn't matter, companies like Scotts, Syngenta, and Bayer wouldn't spend so much trying to influence us.
No, Gardeners alone won't solve social and economic insanity, climate change, or biodiversity loss. No serious Gardener claims they will. But gardens are where many people can, and do, first experience their ability to make a positive difference. That experience often grows into broader engagement from food security to conservation, community building to literacy, STEAM education to public policy, to say nothing of spiritual connection to all that is larger than us.
We are neither smug nor naïve. (One of the reliable and mostly-joyful lessons of the Garden is that she has a way of knocking smugness and naïvete out of most people in pretty short order).
We are Gardeners: always learning, always adapting, and always capable of doing better.
Let's keep growing, Gardeners. We need all the green-thumbed idealism we can get. We could not be more grateful to be here growing together.
Jennifer & The Cultivating Place Team
PS: Keep reading for updates on all things Cultivating Place: Podcast, Film, Gatherings, and Connections...
Small friends in green places. A Pacific Chorus Frog down by our creek has chosen this fig leaf for their resting place across this summer. We spot her nearly every day.
PODCAST:
Green-thumbed idealism and the hard, growing work of it is a constant theme on Cultivating Place, from guests and hosts.
Since the New Moon of June, this green-thumbed hope and work in the world has come to us from photographer, scientist and National Geographic Explorer, Krystle Hickman; from Denver, CO-based home gardener turned-public garden founder and grower, Lisa Negri; from community-and-family-farmer, Susan Greutman in South Bend, IN; from public garden and Arboretum leader, Amanda Hannah, in Columbus, OH; and, all the way from the UK, with Andrew Fisher Tomlin, renowned planting designer. Now this is how we grow...with green-thumbed intention and idealism.
Enjoy catching up on your listening to the episodes from the last month (click each name or image for its audio link).....
THE POWER OF GARDENERS FILM SERIES:
WE DID IT! We made our most recent milestone: last Friday the 9th of July, we hosted our Sustaining-Supporter-Only preview screenings of Episode One of Season One of the Power of Gardeners film series.
Over Zoom, across three different screening times to accommodate different time zones, Cultivators of Place sat alongside Myriam and me to watch the in-progress draft of the first 1/2 hour episode of the 10-episode series.
I would be lying to you if I said that neither Myriam nor I cried at the miraculousness and vulnerability of witnessing this to-date most fully-formed iteration of our vision, for me 30-years in the germinating.
We garnered fabulous affirmation, and equally important, we gathered meaningful constructive feedback for improvement. THANK YOU ALL for attending and responding. When the episode is turned into our presenting station, Northern California Public Media, we will send all sustaining supporters a link to the current iteration.
And trust me when I say: WE CAN'T WAIT TO SHARE MORE!
Myriam and her editing crew will spend the next few months formulating the next 9 episodes, the title art, the credit sequence screens, and getting us to "picture-lock" on the story lines. We are in the process of finalizing underwriting partners and closing the $200,000 gap between now and the film series rolling out.
Thank you all for your participation and contribution. Like any healthy ecosystem, every organism contributes at their specific level, and we need them ALL.
When you are a Cultivating Place sustaining supporter, making a recurring monthly gift of $10 or more, or an annual gift of $120 or more, investing in this important work coming to fruition–you get early notice, discounted ticket prices, extra offerings, and value adds all along the way. To say nothing of the satisfaction of knowing you, too, are growing our world better.
You can connect with us about film underwriting, pre-screenings events in 2026/2027, gift licenses for school or garden groups, etc.: info@cultivatingplace.org.
The fleeting, lovely face of a summer-blooming Calachortus bulb in Northern California. June 2026, Modoc County. Such geometry of spirit and engineering.
AND FINALLY...Praise to the Garden spirits, you made it to the end...
Your bonus?
Well, Summer as a Gardener and plant lover, which means fireflies, and luna moths, penstemon and salvia and roses and zinnias and dahlias and all the beans, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs, (we could go on) and ...one more time:
MARK your calendars to join us for the inaugural biennial
Cultivating Place Symposium September 25th & 26th, 2026:
THE POWER OF GARDENERS: SOUTH BEND
co-sponsored by Botany & Co in South Bend, IN
Cultivating Place sustaining supporters, who make a recurring monthly gift of $10 or more, or an annual gift of $120 or more, look for your Cultivating Place-supporter-only invitations to register starting on August 1st for this catalyzing two-day gathering featuring me, Ben Futa, Abra Lee, Wambui Ippolito, Myriam Nicodemus, Chris Fehlhaber, AND a sneak peak film-screening and panel, followed by a community reception on Friday, and inspiring guided Garden and Green Space tours on Saturday morning.
THE POWER OF GARDENERS: SOUTH BEND.... we'd love to see your there ! Join us!
Cultivating Place GATHERS:
Other UPCOMING events:
(all underlined headings are live links to registration pages)
July 21, 2026
COMMUNING - BOOK CLUB
"When Trees Testify" - led by Abra Lee
via Zoom 3 pm Pacific/ 6 pm eastern
August 18,2026
COMMUNING - BOOK CLUB
"Sounds Wild & Broken" + "How Flowers Made Our World", both by David George Haskell
Led by Jennifer Jewell
via Zoom 3 pm Pacific/ 6 pm eastern
SEPTEMBER 25 - 27
Cultivating Place Foundation & Botany & CO present:
INAUGURAL CULTIVATING PLACE SYMPOSIUM: SOUTH BEND, IN
FRIDAY: Full day of Lectures on People, Plants, & Places + evening reception w/ CP TEAM
SATURDAY: Place Based Garden tours and Experience
MORE INFO AND REGISTRATION OPEN August 1, 2026
OCTOBER 15 - 17, 2026
AMERICAN HORTICULTURAL THERAPY ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
Jennifer Jewell Keynote speaker + Panel Moderator
PLUS SNEAK PEEK Pre-screening of The Power of Gardeners Film Series on PBS stations (April 2027)
More 2026 events here: GATHER
The organic structure formed from windfall limbs in the Manitou Island, MN garden of longtime St. Paul Garden Club Member.
CULTIVATING PLACE FOUNDATION
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