Garden

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Bank is a dedicated organization that has been working to address native seed supply challenges for the past three decades.

Chris Felhaber is a gardener, a husband, and a father. Now based in the Chicago area, Chris has worked in public horticulture in a variety of capacities and with well-known organizations, including with plantsman Roy Diblik in Wisconsin.

In honor of the Vernal Equinox, and the balance we long for, we are joined this week by humanist, conservationist, Professor, and writer in residence at the Harvard Divinity School, Terry Tempest Williams.

This week on Cultivating Place, Abra Lee is in conversation with Laverne Brockington and Vance Davis, great nieces of Annie Mae Vann Reid, an historic florist and entrepreneur based in Darlington, South Carolina.

We learn more about some of our earliest and BEST native pollinating bees – the orchard mason bees. We’re in conversation with Thyra McElvie, who loves “these sweet little bees". And it was this love that brought her to gardening in her adulthood.

We're in conversation with Michael Fritts, founder of Golden Feather Tea in Concow, Calif., exploring some of the history and cultivation, the rituals, and the rewards (which are many) of tea.

Coming up this week on Cultivating Place, host Ben Futa is in conversation with artist & activist Gardener, Tanja Hollander. Tanja works with gardens, social practice, photography, video, and installation to understand how cultural and visual relationships help us make sense of our chaotic world.

Cultivating Place checks in with two humans who are cultivating their place with care in the wake of this catastrophe. Leigh Adams and Shawn Maestretti are Studio Petrichor, based in Los Angeles.

Terry Richardson joins the conversation with Abra Lee. Richardson is known to many as The Black Thumb: Orchid Care Made Simple, an intrepid, enthusiastic, and encouraging orchid rescuer, educator, and storyteller.

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?