The Adventurous Art of Cultivating Place, with Peg & Awl

This week on Cultivating Place, we lean into the Art of CP, exploring how the act of Cultivating Place is artful, and how Art can be one our most beautiful acts of Cultivating Place. How acts of Cultivating Place and acts of making Art both offer us the agency to create new worlds, or new versions of our current world. These human impulses are simultaneously miraculous and represent the endless variations on life modeled to us by this world. We’re in conversation with the deeply placed, curiosity, and art-based duo of Margaux and Walter Kent – visionaries behind the artful life resource known as Peg & Awl. They’re joining us from their home, shop, studios, and five-acre wood in West Chester, PA. As Walter shares: “When I am not making something or making a place to make something, I feel lost or confused.” As Margaux writes: “The world is bursting with magic, and for anyone looking, it positively pulses!” These two truths are among the many gifts given to us through our Cultivating Place and Artful practices. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In 2008, Cincinnati, Ohio, developed the program that has earned it the nickname: Green City. The Green Cincinnati Plan (GCP) is a now-17-year-running community vision updated regularly to address climate change and build a more sustainable, equitable, and resilient future for its citizens. 2008 was also the year that garden/grower by nature and engineer by profession, Rose Henry Seeger, was introduced to the amazing concept of Green Roofs as a way to make architecture integral to a more sustainable and healthy urban future. Green roofs provide positive and healing benefits for both the environment and its people, brought Rose’s interest in growing and engineering together. She’s never looked back since founding Green City Resources, a Cincinnati-based, woman-owned company specializing in the design, installation, and maintenance of stormwater management systems; bioretention, vegetated / green roofing, rainwater harvesting, and native/sustainable landscaping. Many of their gardens do all of this as well as being healing and horticulture therapy gardens. This is Cultivating Place at elevation. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, we celebrate late summer and fall on the horizon in conversation about one of fall’s stars in the garden… past, present, and future. CP host Ben Futa is in conversation with Jessica Hall of Harmony Harvest Flower Farm, based in Weyers Cave, Virginia, to explore their "Mum Project," which aims to revive chrysanthemum production in the US by preserving, sharing, and evaluating heirloom/heritage mums. On On November 13th, 2025 Harmony Harvest's annual Virtual Mum Summit returns, bringing together growers, designers, and flower lovers for a full day of inspiration, learning, and fun. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, host Abra Lee dives into the world of pathways to plant professions with Jazmin Albarran, executive Director of Seed Your Future, a non-profit whose vision is a world where Everyone understands the power of plants and is aware of the promising careers in the art, science, technology, and business of horticulture. Horticulture is the art, technology, and science of plants. It is the food we eat, the landscapes we live and play in, and the environments we thrive in. It is the business of managing and utilizing what we grow while maintaining the health of our soil, air, and water, as well as the well-being of our children, communities, and the world. In short - it's all about plants! Every day, the plant world is quietly led by horticulture heroes and plant champions who make an enormous impact on our lives and the future of the planet. Through their online, in-person and year-round programs, including the Horticultural Heroes stories shared, the Immersive Learning for High School Educators, Green Career Week (coming up October 6 - 10, 2025), Seed Your Future aims to share stories, promote horticulture, and inspire more people to pursue careers working with plants. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

As autumn and harvest begins to color the edges of our awareness, this week on Cultivating Place, we’re joined by two people whose work is all about perennial and abundant harvest as represented by the concept, and the endless generosity, of an Orchard.  The Giving Grove, based in Kansas City, lives a purpose of providing healthy calories, strengthening community, and improving the urban environment through a nationwide network of sustainable little orchards. Jennifer is in conversation with the Giving Grove’s Co-Executive Director, Ashley Vernon,  and Ryan Watson, the National Orchard Operations and Education Manager, who share more about their work nurturing communal orchardists across the country in 16 sites and 650 little orchards with big impact. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Looking back, even just this year, Cultivating Place has had multiple conversations with plantspeople from around the country about the inspirational plants from, and places known as, prairies. An iconic and beloved ecosystem strongly identified with the American Midwest. As summer warms and mellows into its Augustness, we’re in conversation this week with two humans who are cultivating their place with the specific purpose of keeping native extant prairie alive and thriving. Stephen Packard and Eriko Kojima of the Somme Prairie Grove Nature Preserve in Illinois join CP today to share more about their prairie place. In the summer of 2021, the Forest Preserves of Illinois’ Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a resolution recognizing Somme Prairie Grove as the 27th dedicated Illinois Nature Preserve managed by the Forest Preserves of Cook County. Part of the Somme Preserves located in Northbrook in north Cook County, Somme Prairie Grove offers 85 acres of high-quality mesic savanna and dry-mesic woodland. The site supports many conserved native plant species, and savanna and shrubland breeding birds. Somme Prairie Grove has benefited from a vibrant stewardship community—led by the North Branch Restoration Project—since 1980 and represents one of the oldest and most comprehensive savanna and woodland restorations in the Midwest. The recovery of Somme Prairie Grove is credited to the longstanding participation of this cohort of dedicated and talented community volunteers, including both the volunteer who kicked it all off, Stephen Packard, and a volunteer since 2015, Eriko. In this back-to-school moment here in the U.S. let us remember there is always more to learn, and we owe a great deal to the teachers – be they 4th grade teachers, nobel prize winning professors, other big G gardeners, prairies or other beloved ecosystems of our places. Listen in - and Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Hot August nights turn to bright August nights at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, WI.  The Garden's annual GLEAM light show is celebrating its 10th anniversary and opens August 30th, transforming the very bright-by-day gardens into equally bright in a different way by night. The award-winning display runs through October 25th, and this year’s exhibit will center on the concept of reflection. Illuminated art installations by light artists from around the country will brighten the Gardens’ landscape, reflecting a language of love for the natural world. Concepts such as the intrigue of plants at night, photosynthesis, bioluminescence, and dynamic equilibrium have all been highlighted in past year’s displays. Join CP host Ben Futa in conversation this week with Benjamin Smith, Show Curator and Missy Jeanne, Public Programs Manager at Olbrich to talk all things bright and beautiful at Olbrich for this GLEAM season. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Ahhh, high summer, my friends – this week we continue with our CP summer-break reprisals, reminding us of the importance of the great outdoors and the care and cultivation of it, revisiting ecological-plantsman Benjamin Vogt’s great work Prairie Up! To inspire your planting and designs for the season ahead, a fierce advocate on behalf of our gardens being critically important links in our world’s broken and fragmented ecological chains. You may remember my 2018 conversation with Benjamin about his first book –A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future? Well, that ethical manifesto now has an instruction manual in Benjamin’s second book - Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design – it might be just the reference you need to get your fall planting and planning season off to a great start. Join us this week for more with Benjamin Vogt! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

The garden in summer is at its fullest sensory delight and overwhelm – the peak of sunlight, growing hours, heat, and growth, ripening, and even rotting. This week, we revisit a BEST OF conversation that embraces this sublime sensuality from a variety of perspectives, in conversation with master naturalist Nancy Lawson.  Nancy is perhaps best known as "The Humane Gardener", the title of her first book, and her online signature. And a humane gardener she is. Nancy is a habitat consultant and founder of The Humane Gardener, LLC. She observes, researches, and pioneers creative wildlife-friendly landscaping methods in her own home habitat and for others. In other words – and in all senses of the phrase – Nancy puts her gardening where her words are, and words and action come together beautifully in her newest book, Wildscape, Trilling Chipmunks, Beckoning Blooms, Salty Butterflies, and other Sensory wonders of Nature.  Together this week, we delve into her newest research and reporting on the complexity and richness of the sensory life of other than human lives: from the botanical to the birds, bugs, mammals, amphibians other wildlife all around us. Wildscape is eye, ear, nose and heart opening! Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week we’re getting back to nature for summer camp: ALL ages invited. We’re in conversation with Rebecca Schwarz and Paige Manges of The Nature Place in La Crosse, WI. It’s a place where we all belong and can keep growing – for sustenance, for survival, and for joy. The Nature Place is dedicated to inspiring and cultivating meaningful connections between people and nature, for the benefit of both, through all-ages programming at their nature-focused community center open to the public, located in La Crosse’s beautiful Myrick Park. With summer vacation in full swing, enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.