THE GARDENS OF ALCATRAZ, with SHELAGH FRITZ
- Jennifer Jewell
- 23 hours ago
- 6 min read
First – a welcoming shout-out to two new public radio stations in the Cultivating Place ecosystem: KHNS in Haines, Alaska and WTXK in Texarkana, Texas – welcome to this growing family.
Now, you may have heard of Alcatraz as an iconic site of incarceration, THE ROCK, and you may very well have heard of the Gardens of Alcatraz, historic but also constantly evolving cultivated spaces on Alcatraz Island. More than a century in the creating, from military personnel and their families when it was a fort, to incarcerated people and the staff as a prison, these gardens tell very interest human and cultural stories and lessons. But if you have not heard of them, this week's for you!
In 2003, the Garden Conservancy and the Golden Gate National Parks
Conservancy formed a partnership with the National Park Service to restore and maintain key gardens on Alcatraz. Through the Alcatraz Historic Gardens Project, the partner organizations preserve, rebuild, and maintain the gardens created by those who lived on the island during its military and prison eras, and interpret their history, horticulture, and cultural significance for visitors.
This week we explore more about ALL of that, in conversation with Shelagh Fritz, Senior Program Manager Alcatraz Historic Gardens, a dramatic , historic, and growing garden site.
Alcatraz is a name rich with story, myth, and drama. It is also a dramatic sight where history, gardens, and how gardens grow us better all come together. This week we continue our theme of gardens and cultural landscapes as a form of social care–tending to place and people.
For more than 20 years, Shelagh has been growing with, and tending to, this dramatic, historic, and growing garden site, and she has expansive garden goals for the future.
Listen in!
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Photos used with permission from Shelagh Fritz and the Golden Gate Parks Conservancy, all rights reserved.
If you enjoyed this program, you might also enjoy these
JOIN US again next week: Flowers and food and land all go together, this seems abundantly clear in late August! Cultivating Place Host Abra Lee celebrates these interconnections with Whitney Jaye and artist and agrarian. She is founder of SunBird Flowers in the Atlanta region, and the co-executive director of SAAFON, the Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network. That's right here, next week. Listen in!
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Thinking out loud this week...
Hey, it's Jennifer—
One of the throughlines of this conversation is the importance of plants in helping people cultivate a hospitable sense of HOME.
Speaking of hospitality, did you get your invitation email letting you know that
registration is now open to all for the 2026 Cultivating Place: Power of Gardeners Symposium this year in the South Bend, Indiana the home of
Cultivating Place Host Ben Futa???? I did, and I registered! If you are not on
our mailing list, make sure to sign up so you get the next email update about
the gathering!
I am excited and more than a little nervous…
Are you all aware of the term misogi? I wasn’t until last week when speaking
to my longest standing friend, besides my sisters and cousins. When I told her
about the progress on the film series and the upcoming symposium in South
Bend, she said to me: "wow, you’re really living up to the concept of Misogi?".
Misogi is a traditional Japanese/Shinto tradition and ritual in which you make
yourself deeply uncomfortable as a way to both cleanse and grow. It is the
antithesis in some ways of making yourself comfortable and at home. The
theory is that by challenging yourself to move out of your comfort zone, you
grow. According to a quick online search, the modern interpretation was
popularized to large extent by the book, The Comfort Crisis, which I did
not read. In the most modern iteration, you pick an annual challenge that
pushes your boundaries and makes you uncomfortable in order to gain fuller
self-awareness, resilience, and strength. I kind of love it, although I kind of
hate it too. The world is uncomfortable enough. I don’t like being scared.
But, I will tell you, to know that my voice and my thoughts go out into people’s
ears across the world every single week is often terrifying if I overthink it. To
think that I might in any way fail or disappoint any of you (which I am bound to
do) is terrifying to me.
And yet, it is clearly my life’s misogi to do it anyway. I so deeply and
profoundly believe in the importance of expanding and elevating the way we
think and talk about gardening that I am willing to face these fears.
I am willing to trust that if I fail you, you will know that I tried to meet all of our
expectations, that this work matters: that being a gardener is far more
important and powerful and meaningful than we have yet to give it credit,
recognition, or respect for.
It’s worth it to dream that we as gardeners and people who tend to plants in
our places can always better embrace, demand, and live up to the true power
of gardeners and ourselves as a keystone species.
All of this looks like far greater recognition, far greater respect in the form of
words and deeds and compensation, and far greater reverence in how we
care for our gardens and how the world cares for gardeners.
That’s why we come together, that’s why we are gathering in South Bend this
year, and that’s all exciting and scary and worth it. I hope to see you there!
This week’s conversation, much like last week’s with Erika and Renee of The New Garden Society gets me fully centered in the full scope of how our human relationship to plants means more to us than even we plant lovers think we know. With that in mind, I want to share a few additional resources for you related to all of this:
The American Horticultural Therapy Association’s annual conference will take place in San Francisco, CA October 16 – 18th this year. And this year an entire track is dedicated to justice involved spaces. The culminating field trip, on Sunday the 18th , will be tours of the Gardens of Alcatraz Island!
Also, if these topics of the importance of gardens and the human impulse to garden and how they relate to spaces and processes of incarceration in the United States today is of interest to you, as it is to me, you should know about a new book: Ecologies of Justice: Making and Unmaking Prison Worlds Through Social Environmental Interventions. Edited by: Matthew DelSesto, Daniela Jauk-Ajamie, Elizabeth Lara, and Shea Zwerver.
I think it, like Doing Time in the Garden by James Jiler referenced last week, will make a lasting impression on our thinking and world. It’s due out from Rutgers University Press in November of this year, but you can pre-order now.
WAYS TO SUPPORT CULTIVATING PLACE
Cultivating Place is a co-production of North State Public Radio, licensed to Chico State Enterprises. Cultivating Place is made possible in part listeners just like you through the support button at the top right-hand corner of every page at Cultivating Place.org
The CP team includes producer and engineer Matt Fidler, with weekly tech and web support from Angel Huracha, weekly communications support by Sheila Stern and Carley Bruckner, and regular hosting by Founder, Jennifer Jewell, as well as Abra Lee in Atlanta, Georgia, and Ben Futa in South Bend, Indiana. We’re based on the traditional and present homelands of the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of the Chico Rancheria. Original theme music is by Ma Muse..
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