Jennifer Jewell

January is prime seed-dreaming and seed-catalogue season. With that in mind we’re revisiting a favorite conversation all about generosity, mutual care, good seeds, and seed people. Who doesn’t need more of all those as we continue to lay the foundation for this new year?

As we continue our new year, we’re once again gaining elevation and new growing thinking. We’re in conversation with Jim Tolstrup, Executive Director of the High Plains Environmental Center in Loveland, Colorado, where, by development design, they caringly cultivate Suburbitat. Suburbitat is a land ethic, a mind-set, and a book that all hold a vision of a built environment where suburbia and native ecosystems exist side by side and intertwined.

Abra Lee is looking forward by looking back. She’s in conversation with Philip Norman, longtime curator at the Garden Museum in London. From New Zealand to London, Philips' is a life shaped by gardens.

Every year since 2007 when the US Senate passed sanctions declaring it, the third week of June is celebrated as National Pollinator week. It is no accident that this is the same week as the Summer Solstice – when many pollinators reach their peak. This week, the peak of Winter, we look back on and forward to the peak of summer and all that we as Gardeners plan for, including our beloved pollinators. We are in conversation with Colorado’s People & Pollinators Action Network, whose work helps us as Gardeners lay the best of plans!

In honor of the Winter Solstice happening this coming weekend on December 21st at 10:03 AM Pacific, we celebrate land and place-based cultivation from a foundation of cultural and spiritual care leading the way. We’re joined in this by Dr. Don Hankins, Professor of Geography and Planning at California State University, Chico.Of Miwok ancestry, Don, for decades now, has focused on applied research of indigenous stewardship practices as a “keystone process to aid in conservation and management of resources”, particularly around the cultural use of fire and and conservation of water. Don has been involved in land management and conservation local organizations and agencies as well as federal and tribal governments.

This week on Cultivating Place we celebrate one woman’s long-standing and loving cultivation of place in rural New Jersey. Janet Mavec is the steward and student of Bird Haven Farm, which after many years of learning from and loving, she now celebrates in word and image in her new place-based memoir: Bird Haven Farm the Story of An Original American Garden, written by Janet and photographed by Ngoc Minh Ngo, out now from Rizzoli Press. This is a conversation about a beautiful, ecological, and intentional human and place collaboration to begin tying up the CP lessons of this season, and looking forward to seeding and inspiring the coming seasons!