THE BOTANICAL JOURNEY & LEXICON OF A CARING PLANTSPERSON, with TIM JOHNSON, NATIVE PLANT TRUST

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Tim Johnson is engaged in the native plant and garden worlds on both personal and professional levels. Having worked with Seed Savers Exchange earlier in his career, Tim last joined us on Cultivating Place a few years back as Executive Director for The Botanic Garden of Smith College.

Tim is a spouse, a father, a lifelong learner, and a gardener. Since January of this year, he is also the newest CEO of the Native Plant Trust, leading this oldest of U.S. plant conservation organizations into its 125th year working to conserve the great biodiversity of native plants in our world - starting with their place in the U.S. Northeast.

We catch up with Tim once again this week to learn more about his botanical journey as well as some of the Native Plant Trust’s past, present, and future vision. This vision is both on the ground, including their part in manifesting the new Northeast Native Seed Network as foundational to shifting the possibilities for great native plant supply for all landscapes; and increasingly this vision is in policy at all levels of local and federal government.

The NPT is intertwined and collaborating with other plant conservation people and groups around the country and world, and it serves as a model for how good plant stewardship can literally grow our world better.

Enjoy!

You can follow Tim and the Native Plant Trust's work on line at:

https://www.nativeplanttrust.org/

and Instagram:

@nativeplanttrust

HERE IS THIS WEEK'S TRANSCRIPT by Doulos Transcription Service:

08-01-24 CP - Botanical Journey and Lexicon - Tim Johnson - final.pdf

Download PDF • 140KB

All photos courtesy of Tim Johnson and the Native Plant Trust, all rights reserved.

If you enjoyed this program, you might also enjoy these

Best of CP programs in our archive:

Navigating By Plants: Uli Lorimer & The Native Plant Trust

The W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory, Plantswoman Tyra Shenaurlt

Reading The Landscape, Courtney Allen, Native Plant Trust

JOIN US again next week, when we’re in conversation with two fabulous

horticulturists from the Denver Botanic Garden, Kevin Williams and

Michael Guidi sharing with us their powerful enthusiasm for the shrubs

of our world and why we should be incorporating more of this kind of

diversity and beauty into our gardens. That's right here, next week.

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Cultivating Place is made possible in part by listeners like you and by generous support from

The Catto Shaw Foundation,

supporting initiatives that empower women and help preserve the planet through the intersection of environmental advocacy, social justice, and creativity.

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Credits and info for images above as follows: NATIVE PLANT TRUST

- 1 shot of Tim standing (without a hat, location unknown), ã Sam Masinter

 GARDEN IN THE WOODS

Images of native plant botanic garden in Framingham, MA

 Credit and copyright as noted in filenames:

- ã Melissa Blackall/WildLinks Environmental Media

- ã Ngoc Minh Ngo

- Uli Lorimer ã Native Plant Trust. Thanks!

  NASAMI FARM

7 images from native plant propagation nursery and Garden

Shop at Nasami Farm in Whately, MA

Includes 1 image by Alexis Doshas ã Native Plant Trust and 1 image by Uli Lorimer ã Native Plant Trust, as noted in filenames. All others just ã Native Plant Trust

 NATIVE PLANT SANCTUARIES

Of Harvey Butler Rhododendron Sanctuary, Springvale, ME (1 by Dan Jaffe Wilder ã Native Plant Trust, 1 just ã Native Plant Trust)

Of Hobbs Fern Sanctuary, Lyman, NH, by Erik Sechler ã Native Plant Trust

CURRENT CONSERVATION WORK

Isotria photos

- 2 images of student lab assistant at Framingham (MA) State Univ, working on an experiment to germinate the rare alpine plant Robbins’s cinquefoil (Potentilla robbinsiana) under supervision of Native Plant Trust Research Botanist Dr. Jessamine Finch (not pictured), Jessamine Finch ã Native Plant Trust

- images of Director of Conservation Michael Piantedosi working on globally rare plant restoration for the globally rare Jesup's milk-vetch (Astragalus robbinsii var. jesupii) on the northern Connecticut River, Jane Roy Brown ã Native Plant Trust

- image of Director of Conservation Michael Piantedosi (L) with USFWS colleague working on restoration of the rare plant Plymouth rose-gentian (Sabatia kennedyana) in coastal New England.

- images of Plant Conservation Volunteers: 1 Isabella Rozza ã Barb Wauchop; 1 unnamed ã Native Plant Trust

- image of a botanist restoring a rare beach grass on the shore of Lake Champlain in VT, Michael Piantedosi ã Native Plant Trust

 ISOTRIA FOLDER inside main folder

5 images from a recent field report by Barbara Moran of WBUR-FM (Boston Univ. NPR) on our 40-year field study of a rare wild orchid, small whorled pogonia (Isotria medeoloides)

by Tim Johnson

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Thinking out loud this week...

For all of you who have ever donated to or are among those cherished

donors who give on a monthly basis to make Cultivating Place possible

– and you really do make this work green and vibrant just as much as

each week's guests do – I have some great news!

I have recently moved into a new chapter of my relationship with North State Public Radio and Capital Public Radio (their umbrella station) out of Sacramento. As a result, all of your donations large and small are now fully tax-deductible and go directly to the support of the public radio stations that fully

support Cultivating Place.

I am thrilled and hope you are also to have such a quality community-oriented station with state-of-the-art capacity behind the production and distribution of Cultivating Place going forward. 

Thank you as always for all of your support – from listening to donating through

the links over at Cultivating Place.com – you grow Cultivating Place better!

Thinking out loud about this conversation with Tim – here’s one of my favorite things Tim says – and I loved so much of his insights about our growing world, but this sticks:

“My greatest strength is I love learning. Why do I love gardening? I love learning.

I try to grow something new every year." 

And among the many things Tim and his work helps to grow are encouraged gardeners, and optimism in a world that needs it, and those are pretty great seeds.

May this be true of us all – keep learning, keep growing.

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WAYS TO SUPPORT CULTIVATING PLACE

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