New Moon 🌚🌙 News - NOVEMBER 2026

22 hours ago

5 min read

Late-season Monarch resting in the garden on late-season milkweed. Preparing for the long flights and long nights ahead.

**Happy New Moon of November 8, 2026–*because the new moon is a perfect time to start fresh, to grow up, and to grow out...***

Happy New Moon, Gardeners,

Our gardens regularly remind us how powerful the collective lives of this planet are-coming together as they do to produce beauty, ecology, craft, food, medicine, ritual, economy, culture, memory, and meaning.

Election Days, like last Tuesday, remind us how powerful our collective voices, we collectively, can be. Not only in outcomes, but in the glorious participation!

Keystone species are never about individuals-you or me; they are about the full collective of individuals-us. New additions to the collective will not/cannot offer the same contributions as the mature members; we all need seasons and support to grow to our full potential.

As we enter a multi-month season deeply tied to celebrating and reinforcing the bonds of our collective communities–collective gratitude, gathering, sharing, swapping, sowing, cooking, baking, gifting, crafting, singing, reflecting–the collective is in full focus.

When I was writing What We Sow, I finally became clear on the fact that while Earth, Wind, Water and Air are the four primary Elements, it takes the seed-bearing plants to really make this planet not only habitable but pleasurable for us as humans.

Speaking recently for the American Horticultural Therapy Association’s annual conference, I was reminded that while our lives are made possible and pleasurable as a result of the elements and the staggeringly diverse and beautiful plant kingdom, we as a species would not actually thrive here without one another.

The Collective-that circle in which we are all related in some way.

Here at Cultivating Place we are related through our impulse to tend to plants, to be tended by them, for all of our prismatic reasons propagated across time, space, conditions.

In my recent conversation with Mike Bollinger, Executive Director of Seed Savers Exchange, he reminded us of this over and over again: "when we save seeds, we save relations." And in that he encapsulates all of the relations that really matter: with the past, with the future, with the plants and animals, our planet mates, and with ourselves and one another. Those are all relations worth saving. Starting right in our own gardens and plant tendings.

And in my deeply-held belief that we as Gardeners, at our best, are a Keystone Species, it is always good to be reminded: without each other growing forward, we could not be a keystone species–all of us Gardeners collectively hold the capacity to grow and hold so much together.

The Collective: love it, lean into it, learn from it, tend it.

For the love of tending plants in our places for the care of all, thank you for being in this collective of Gardeners,

Jennifer and the Cultivating Place Team

PS: Keep reading/scrolling for updates on all things Cultivating Place: Radio Program & Podcast, Film Series, Gatherings, and Connections as we deepen into this season...✨✨✨

SUPPORT

A collective of late-season flowers, fruits, foliage, and seeds gathered and arranged by a collective of Gardeners in honor of my Aunt for the altar at her church-based memorial service. Brattleboro, VT October 31, 2026.

PUBLIC RADIO PROGRAM & PODCAST:

The collective runs deep and wide across these many years of Cultivating Place conversations between me, Abra, and Ben and all of you.

Since the New Moon of October, the collective is both well represented in prismatic ways and inspiring in ever more prismatic ways. Ben had such a moving conversation with Charity Stowe of Herstoric Development in South Bend, Indiana, demonstrating once again how Gardens and Gardeners bring so much more than plants together. In my conversation with Mike Bollinger of Seed Savers Exchange, the Collective and Seeds as a collective catalyst are the thesis, similarly to the importance of the collective-bargaining power of Gardeners in our economy in my conversation with Mark Lewis of Trailhead. And, in my conversation with Kai Wright, co-host of the Guardian's Stateside with Kai & Carter, the collective support of his own garden contributes to his strength as a global journalist.

There are days when we might feel alone, but remember, on those days, when your work feels unfinished or unnecessary, when your days or your heart feel empty, when finances or love seem unstable or fleeting, you are never alone, you are always part of a collective. The collective of lives who grow this world better.

Enjoy catching up on your listening to the episodes from the last month (click each name or image for its audio link).....

SUPPORT

THE CULTIVATING PLACE ECOSYSTEM COLLECTIVE:

Speaking of the collective, and the Cultivating Place Ecosystem, we are so pleased to officially welcome two new members to the Cultivating Place Foundation Board of Directors.

Artists, advocates, Gardeners, Rebecca Allan of New York, and Polly Wood of Oregon, have served in the advisory council for Cultivating Place for nearly a year. At our in-person board meeting in September in South Bend, they were officially welcomed onto the governing board.

Our full board now consists of: Jennifer Jewell of California (non-voting), Khoa Huynh of Indiana, Sabrina Jewell of Ohio, Wambui Ippolito of New York, Williard Williams of Oregon, Gabe Pfeiffer of Minnesota, and Rebecca and Polly. Flora Jewell-Stern of Colorado and South Carolina, sits on our Advisory Council.

You can find out much more about all members of our Ecosystem through the ABOUT tab at the lower left hand corner of every page on CultivatingPlace.org

You can always connect with all of us by sending us an email, we always love to hear from you: info@cultivatingplace.org.

Board Members of the Cultivating Place Foundation who were able to join in person in South Bend, IN

AND FINALLY...good gatherings to grow forward to:

Our 2026/2027 #100-Days In Place Journey is fully underway and our next gathering for registered participants takes place November 10 at 8 am Pacific/ 11 am Eastern. We will open this gathering with artist and participant Kim Maynard of Seattle leading us in some thoughts and practices for overcoming the hobbling effects of perfectionism, and then enjoy an round-the--room check-in.

Registration for the project will remain open through November 15th; the journey will conclude February 16, 2027.

Our monthly Ecosystem Communing is taking a break in November, but we will be back on December 15th with a pre-Winter Solstice celebration and Book Club gathering around the very seasonally resonant The Fullness of Time, Marking the Day by Birdsong and Blooms, Shadows and Stars (Penguin, 2026). Registration will open for this gathering on November 15th - you will get a reminder in the weekly podcast ;)

No matter how your day or season is going, deepening in to place reminds us how much and many we have to be thankful for, and to grow for.

That's our power!

More 2026/2027 events here: GATHER

The soft aging fruits of a flowering and fruiting crab apple show off in contrast to the rounded body of a human-sized Stephen Proctor vessel at the Inn on Putney Road, Brattleboro, VT - November 2026.