CP LIVE: DIALOGUES TO GROW BY
Cultivating Place LIVE: Dialogues to Grow By (CP LIVE) is a special project of the
Cultivating Place Foundation, with major support from the Catto Shaw Foundation
.
CP LIVE is a curated series of Gardener-supporting CP interviews recorded and filmed live in front of an audience in select locations around the country in 2024 and 2025, exploring some of the most compelling & important lessons learned in the first 10 years of CP
about who Big G-Gardeners are
and what they are growing in our world. ​
WHY?
Since 2020, a near-record number of Americans self-identify as engaging in gardening. That’s around 100 MILLION US households. 1.3 billion acres of land in the US is owned privately by individuals. More than 40 million of those acres are non-native, chemically dependent, over-irrigated, turf grass.
When we collectively understand “gardening” beyond toxic lawn “care” and/or superficial decoration, so many beneficial pathways are activated in our world–progress towards solutions to some of the tragedies and horrors that worry us most: biodiversity loss, climate change, chemicals in our soil, water, food, food insecurity, the insect apocalypse, the decline of distinct languages and cultures, a sane economic model, war versus life, loneliness versus community, loss of Faith in something bigger than us.
If even a fraction more of those 1.3 billion acres of privately owned land were tended for healthy food, for native plant habitat, for cultural and community knowledge, for less resource use and greater community-based economic health, think what we might achieve: biodiversity gain, carbon stored, watersheds replenished, cultures strengthened, communities reconnected, scientific and sacred knowledge reintegrated. Into our daily lives.
Cultivating Place, and its special film project, Cultivating Place LIVE, elevate and expand the way we collectively think and talk about Gardening and Gardeners in our world in order to make visible the myriad, often surprising, ways that these cultivating humans (from backyard gardeners to artists to cultural land stewards) and their tended spaces grow our world better: socially, culturally, environmentally, economically, and spiritually.
When we see ALL that the best of Gardens and Gardeners grow, we value them more appropriately: in word, in deed, in pay, and protection for Gardens and Gardeners of all kinds.
When we value these growing people and spaces more appropriately, they can more intentionally, effectively, and beautifully grow us all.
Join us to listen, see, and grow, yourself. Cultivating Place LIVE