Gardeners

Host Ben Futa welcomes Colleen Raney of Washington State’s Songbird Seed Company and Diadem Flower Company to welcome October. Raney founded a seed company devoted to cultivating and preserving exceptional sweet peas.

Happy Autumn! Cultivating Place is proud to launch an occasional series from Host Abra Lee, delving into our Garden past to better understand and illuminate our Garden present and future. Sometimes we have to look back to grow forward!

Third- and fourth-generation stewards of rice, land, and planet, Bryce and Brita Lundberg join Cultivating Place this week to share why, and all that grows from that single dedication.

Erin Benzakein of Floret Flower Farm needs little introduction to most garden-minded listeners. She has been so instrumental in cultivating a flower-farming economy in our country.

This week he's in conversation with David Jacques, also known by the internet persona "Davey Wavey". David is the owner of Frog Meadow Bed & Breakfast, a retreat for men in southern Vermont.

Alcatraz is a name rich with story, myth, and drama. It is also a dramatic sight where history, gardens, and how gardens grow us better all come together. This week we continue our theme of gardens and cultural landscapes as a form of social care–tending to place and people. We’re joined by Shelagh Fritz, the Senior Program Manager of Alcatraz Historic Gardens, part of the Golden Gate Parks Conservancy.

SummerHome Garden in Denver, CO, is a playful and powerful twist on the idea that our gardens can be our summer homes.

Krystle Hickman is an award-winning conservation photographer, author, artist, and National Geographic Explorer. Her passion is for native bees wherever she finds them, starting in her home place of California.

Exploring public gardens as living classrooms, the quiet power of trees in city life, and how tending landscapes can cultivate resilience, curiosity, and belonging.

Kate Brown is an MIT Distinguished Professor in the History of Science. Across her career, her research has sometimes inadvertently documented the impact of urban, often small and under-resourced gardens and gardeners in our world.