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Cultivating Place: Library science is (garden) life science, Staci Catron and Jennie Oldfield of The Cherokee Garden Library, Atlanta, GA

Staci Catron and Jennie Oldfield
Jena P. Jones
Staci Catron and Jennie Oldfield

In our ongoing exploration of who gardeners are, where gardeners are, what they are growing in this world, and why that matters to all of us, we use this midwinter moment for a mid-winter retreat.

We head south to the Keenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center and their remarkable Cherokee Garden Library – named for the historic Cherokee rose, prevalent across the south.

Staci Catron has been the Library’s Director since 2000, and Jennie Oldfield is the collection’s Senior Technical Librarian/Supervisory Archivist.

Images courtesy of the Cherokee Garden Library
Images courtesy of the Cherokee Garden Library

The two join Cultivating Place this week to share so much more about the fertile ground of their work – enriching all of our garden lives.

The three of us discuss the importance of horticultural and garden library collections for preserving the past and enlivening our present and future.

As a result of their work in archiving, research, and exhibitions, this conversation continues our celebrations of Black History Month, and it will pair nicely with a warm cup of something on a cold afternoon. Listen in!

Images courtesy of the Cherokee Garden Library
Images courtesy of the Cherokee Garden Library

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We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations.

The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

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Jennifer Jewell is the creator and host of the national award-winning, weekly public radio program and podcast, Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History & the Human Impulse to Garden, Jennifer Jewell is a gardener, garden writer, and gardening educator and advocate. Particularly interested in the intersections between gardens, the native plant environments around them, and human culture, she is the daughter of garden and floral designing mother and a wildlife biologist father.
Matt Fidler is a producer and sound designer with over 15 years’ experience producing nationally distributed public radio programs. He has worked for shows such as Freakonomics Radio, Selected Shorts, Studio 360, The New Yorker Radio Hour and The Takeaway. In 2017, Matt launched the language podcast Very Bad Words, hitting the #28 spot in the iTunes podcast charts.