To welcome October, this week on Cultivating Place, host Ben Futa welcomes Colleen Raney of Washington State’s Songbird Seed Company and Diadem Flower Company.
Colleen founded Songbird Seed Co., a seed company devoted to cultivating and preserving exceptional sweet peas.
What started as a personal fascination with the sweet pea became a deeper study of their history, varieties, cultivation, and extraordinary diversity.
Today, Colleen grows hundreds of sweet pea varieties each year, selecting and sharing seeds that she finds particularly beautiful, unusual, and worthy of being grown again. Her work is grounded in the belief that sweet peas need not be complicated, and there is so much to be discovered in paying attention.
Colleen publishes a bi-annual periodical, The Sweet Pea: A Garden Companion, and she is the founder of the American Sweet Pea Society.
Together, Ben and Colleen explore her early life in acting and singing, and the connection between scent, memory, and our sense of home.
We follow Colleen’s growth from tending a simple garden and growing flowers for pollinators into a full-fledged flower farm, with a particular focus on her success growing sweet peas. They also talk about stepping back, paying attention, and letting the plants tell us what they need.
At the beginning of the season for sowing many spring bloomers, we hope you join us by listening in!
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